Never come and run the boat! Unless you are a kind of farmer at home and can’t even get the money you can’t get out of your marriage (not including buying a house and a car, just talking about the three-month wedding gifts that add up to about 100,000 yuan). Running a boat cannot make you rich, it can only make you get rid of poverty!
First, let me introduce myself. I am a graduate of Dalian Maritime University, a graduate of of Level 16, majoring in navigation technology (that is, crew members of the deck department). I have been engaged in the sailing industry for four years. Shipowner is a British company with a position of three deputy. Let’s talk about the life of a seaman in my eyes.
All things have two sides, first start with positive energy.
The first point is that the income of seafarers is much higher than that of most jobs on the shore. Ninety-nine percent of seafarers come to sail, but what they value most is the high income of seafarers. I'm on international routes, so I don't know much about domestic routes. Let me only refer to myself. The ship I work for is a ship that transports liquefied petroleum gas. Currently, it is only three pairs. The monthly salary is about 23k to RMB (it will fluctuate due to changes in the US dollar exchange rate). Moreover, food, accommodation and transportation are all free on the boat, and you can't spend much money even if you want to spend it. So you basically earn as much as you have left every month. And this is only the third mate, the second mate has a salary of about 30k, the first mate has more, about 50k, and the captain's salary is about 80k (monthly salary, converted into soft girl coins, and the salary on the ship is, most Chinese crew members have no salary after getting off the ship, but they can consider doing side jobs and getting some pocket money). From the third mate to the second mate to the first mate to the captain, it can be as short as ten years, and as many as sixteen or seventeen years.
Compare the land work. The land work can reach 10k, which is basically rare in third-tier cities below the third-tier cities, and even if there are, the competition will be very fierce. And even if you have this income, you have to remove your own cost of living, and the remaining discretionary quota may be only 5-6k. (Someone here may be competing with me about the salary of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. Then you have to think about the living costs and pressures in these places. There are more than a dozen kilograms in Beijing, but how many thousand can I leave a month?) Another aspect is that for most workers, the income ceiling of work on land is relatively low. For most people, it is already amazing to have an income of about 25k for more than ten years, and more people cannot reach this level even when they retire. On the boat, the salary ceiling is very high, and the captain earns a monthly income of less than 100,000 yuan, let’s think about it.
In summary, the disposable income of seafarers is much higher than that on land.
Second point, the seafarers are not under great pressure on their work on the ship. Take myself as an example. Generally, when ships are sailing normally, I am on duty at the bridge from 8:00 to 12:00 in the morning and from 8:00 to 12:00 in the evening (most of the time, there are no ships nearby, so I don’t have to spend too much energy to avoid collisions). I work overtime for two hours in the afternoon to maintain the life-saving fire equipment on the deck. Working for up to ten hours a day is basically half-skiing. Ships are very busy when they are harboring, and they are twelve hours a day, but the maximum time to harbor is two or three days. Most of the time I still sail at sea. There are many entertainment facilities on the boat. Each of our company's boats has two PS4s and a professional gym. It's also very happy to exercise and play games in your spare time.
The third point is that the food on the boat is better. To be precise, the ingredients are better and there is no shortage of vegetables. There are fruits every day, including milk, beef, pork ribs, shrimps, etc. As for what you make, it depends entirely on what kind of chef you meet. If you are lucky, you will get more than ten pounds when you get on the boat at the restaurant every day. If you are unlucky, you will get a good taste of garbage. You can eat every day and feel like you are being tortured.
The fourth point is the freedom of seamen. Because they are far away from society and run around the world, they are still very restricted by their families and society. For many crew members (actually most crew members, whether they are single or family members), when they go to the ground to find a place with big swords (Menerqing, an old driver in the port) to relax and solve their physiological needs, it is already very common. Most crew members in the past ten years have to say that they are all over North and South America, Asia and Europe, and there is really not much bragging element.This is really great for male creatures. The crew I have met, who have never been to the ground and can count it with one hand (of course, there are also a small number of crew members who are clean and clean, such as the answerer, one is that they are timid and afraid of getting sick, and the other is that they have a beautiful wife at home, and they are psychologically restrained. They create time for wise men before they arrive at the port)
In fact, from the front, the life of the seamen on the ship is still OK, and the pressure and rhythm are still very good compared to the shore. But as the saying goes, in fact, every gift of fate is marked with its price behind it. Behind the high salary is the hardships that people on the land cannot imagine.
First point, what the seafarers pay the most, even worth the salary than the work content itself, is the separation from their family. Looking at the contracts of international seafarers, they can be as short as four months and as long as nine months. If you encounter uncontrollable factors such as the epidemic, you may have thirteen or fourteen months on the boat for a long time. My contract period is currently five months, but due to the impact of the epidemic, many countries do not allow change of staff. I have been on the boat for eleven months.
eleven months, it only takes ten months for a baby to be born from a cell. During these eleven months, you cannot visit your parents, you cannot hug your lover, and you cannot accompany your children to grow up. As a young man with a strong spirit, he has a beautiful wife at home, but he is out of reach. He is lonely and can only be a self-satisfied person. People working on land cannot feel that helplessness.
and the sailor on duty with me. When he was on board for three months, his wife suddenly suffered from serious illness. She was in the ICU and was still pregnant with a five-month-old child. Think about how much his wife needed him by her side at this time, but due to the impact of the epidemic, he could not go back at all, so he could only be on the boat every day. This is just an example around me. There are too many similar things in the seafarer industry. Parents are critically ill and cannot even see the last time. There are too many things that my wife and children are sick and hospitalized and cannot be with them. The emotional bondage to family is the eternal pain of the profession of seafarers.
The second is the health of the seafarers. I have no day off for the eleven months on the boat. The longest continuous rest time per day is only eight hours, which means that the longest continuous sleep time per day is only seven hours, and most of the time per day is only more than six hours. The working hours of the third deputy are not too anti-human. The duty hours of the second deputy are from twelve o'clock in the morning to 4 a.m., from twelve o'clock to 4 p.m., and at 10 a.m., you have to get up and work overtime for more than an hour. His continuous sleep time does not exceed five hours a day, and he is not in the normal sleep period. And if the weather is bad, the boat will sway and the quality of sleep cannot be guaranteed. Therefore, the health status and average life expectancy of seafarers are actually much worse than those of land jobs.
The third point is social status. Although seafarers have a high income, in China, the social identity of the seafarers profession is very low. Even teachers who earn two or three thousand a month have a higher social identity than those of seafarers. In India, the Philippines and Europe, seafarers are a relatively common profession, like my Indian sailor, his neighbors and relatives, etc., and they are running a lot of boats. But in China, most people don’t have this concept when people mention seafarers. China has too little social welfare for seafarers, and legal protection is simply too little, so the Chinese seafarers market is now in chaos, with black intermediaries flying everywhere and garbage training institutions everywhere. Chinese seafarers are really exhausted physically and mentally, and they have to be exploited and exploited. If you do not have a formal contract with the intermediary company, you have to pay even social security by yourself.
The fourth is career prospects. The current international shipping market continues to be sluggish, and it is actually a sunset industry. It is very rare for a seaman to change careers and it is very difficult to turn back. First, it is difficult to go from extravagant to frugality, and second, the skills of crew members are not much related to land work. Therefore, it is very rare for seafarers to turn back. Once they get into the trap, their only choice is to bite the bullet and walk on the level of captain and mate, and then go to the shipping company on the land to seek development. If you can't reach the level of the captain and mate, you must basically start from scratch when returning to land. It is too difficult for people in their thirties to start from scratch, and it is basically impossible.
or above is the current situation of Chinese seafarers in my eyes. If you read and read this, I hope that when your relatives, friends, children and neighbors have plans to travel on a boat, please let them be cautious!
