Soon to be gone.
Well, I’ll very soon be leaving to start studying abroad aboard an actual merchant ship; the one I was assigned to is the M/V Liberty Glory. It’s an old, 183m long rust bucket that delivers grain bulk to poorly developed African ports. It’s at the bottom of all the ships, the equipment on board is old, outdated, and the crew has to work all the time to keep it together. It’s slow, at a modest 15 knots (where as most modern container ships go around 30 knots) and because of its small size, it rolls pretty badly as well, and to make things worse, the ship frequents heavily pirated waters, and is the right size and slow enough to be a target for pirates.
So all in all, it doesn’t sound so good. Bad ship, bad route, bad crew, bad equipment, bad ports.
So why am I still excited? Well, I was pretty shook up about it when I heard from other people from my school who had been aboard the ship, when they described in gory detail all the problems and the bad time they had on the ship. I was pretty freaked out, to be honest. Who wants to spend a 100 days aboard a hell-hole of a ship?
Well, I guess I will. I don’t have much of a choice, I can’t find a different sea partner to save my life or to possibly get another ship, so I’m pretty much stuck. And one of the biggest, most important things my old roommate pointed out was this: since it is slow, it will be a lot of port time. Since it’s broken down, I’ll learn a ton fixing it up. The crew won’t be bad if I go in with the right approach and attitude. And as far as everything else goes, well…no matter what ship I go on, I’ll still be spending the majority of it on the oceans. Also, he made the point of since it isn’t exactly the most expensive, pristine vessel, the crew probably won’t be so tight-lipped about everything.
So, all things aside, I think I’ll be alright.
Also, I get two weeks off before I go out to sea! Woot.
