How can deck cadets make most of their time on board a ship?

This blog post contains excerpts/ pieces of advice from quora which helped me a lot and can help you greatly as deck cadets

Factors to consider

The first step is learn how to motivate yourself on land. The second step is to lay out goals, and a time line. The third step is to deal with the shipboard part.

Once you get on the ship, add the following things to your consideration:

• Hydration,
• Nutrition,
• Sleep,
• Proper concentration on learning,
• Exercise,
• Stress control,
• Mental stimulation and
• Properly balanced Social Stimulation.

The first three are difficult, and make a huge difference. Hydration is number one on purpose. If your urine isn’t clear at all times, you’re not sailing right. Nutrition is up to you to an extent, but sailors tend to do a very bad job with this. Very high salt and sugar intake has predictable results – salt will dehydrate you/mess with electrolytes and sugar will make you hyper/lethargic.

Your ability to sleep properly is impeded on all sides by noise, the motion of the ship, stress, smells, light, irregular schedule and so forth. You’ve got to figure out how to keep enough sleep in the “bank” – sometimes this requires taking a power nap when you’re overworked and you get a half hour tea break.Sleep is not something you could take lightly. A normal human being requires 6-8 hours of sleep daily to function properly and you’ll have days when is not possible to sleep for 6 hours at a stretch.

A cadet has stimuli in addition to the normal stuff that makes them go bat-shit crazy. It’s exciting to be on a real ship moving real cargo with real mariners who treat you something like a human being. Don’t get caught up in this. It’s exciting to be in other countries you’ve heard of all your life. Don’t get caught up in this.

Lots of cadets experience a level of freedom unprecedented in their life and react in predictable ways. Don’t let it all distract you – in a few short years, your noob seamanship will be all that stands between 20 shipmates and their watery graves.

LEARN IT ALL WHILE YOU CAN!

Early in your career, it’s important to not over-do it with exercise. Use it as a tool to keep you fit, even out your sleep, and manage stress. Don’t work out so hard that it makes you too tired to work or study. It’s common to see cadets and third officers who go berserk in the gym, but can’t stay alert on the job.

Mental stimulation – pick something (other than movies/video games) you can quietly do in your room by yourself for an hour or two every day. Movies and video games are great, but for this, you want something where you are mentally active as opposed to reactive.

Social stimulation – for most cadets, you should estimate how much social interaction seems right to you, then divide that by 4. Learn to keep yourself company. There’s no rule that says the cadet has to get drunk and have sex in every port. There’s no rule that says that officers have to help cadets who are disruptively social on the bridge.

A couple of thoughts on goals/planning. First – if you’re on short voyages , your exertion will just keep on increasing but there would be continuous stimulation of changing circumstances and that’ll help you learn a lot. Also time seems to pass a little faster when you’re on short voyages. So, take this into account in your schedule.

Second – If you’re on long voyages, time passes comparatively slower as your daily schedule would remain more or less same depending on seniors and other factors. Monotony might kick in, but then again if you’re really passionate about what you’re doing it would barely stay.

Lastly – just like in a voyage plan, you have to monitor your progress and make changes as necessary.

Sponging Information

Tanker, Bulker or container, a first time cadet should be like a sponge absorbing everything in & picking up the ropes. No one is going to ask anything of you which is out of your capability, and none should & if they do, then they need their head examined, Captain or Officer, as your safety & the safety of the ship will be compromised.

As an example our ship almost lost an anchor approaching a river port as my Chief Mate placed a myself a one month old cadet to stand by the anchor brake & I misunderstood an order that was not intended for me & let go the anchor whilst the vessel had a headway of 7–8 knots. Needless to say immediate action was taken from the bridge & short of losing a lot of hull paint, a disaster was averted but this is just to prove a point.

If you don’t understand something told to you, ask again & again & if you still don’t know what to do about it, simple, don’t do it.

Keep your mouth shut & eyes & ears open to all that’s going on, don’t be over smart, what you learned in your pre-sea is of not much vale in the real world & remember safety comes first, last & always.

Feeling lost & confused

As a deck cadet what you go through is a lot. Even before u complete one job it might happen that you are given 10 other jobs. That might lead to you feeling lost and you might tend to forget things and eventually lose interest. All you need to do is take it easy. You not the only one. Relax n try to be happy.

When onboard always have a smiling face (either way if you are having a bad time, might as well laugh it off). Be obedient to your seniors even if u feel that your seniors are not good at their jobs. Just give them the respect that they want and things will be easier. All in all stay positive and make your days count.

Its tough, lonely, rough seas, mostly bad inhospitable weather, hard work at odd hours. You can be called to work at anytime of day or night you have no fixed hours of work. Your salary is the lowest on the ship & if you create problems with your Chief Mate or Master your life becomes even more miserable.

So if you need to be rough, tough and a hard case yourself or else you’d be investing your parents hard earned money in a profession which presently is at the top of the unemployment scale. I don’t mean to depress you but its better you know the worst then if it gets better good for you.

I know cadets who wanted to run away from the ship (my own batchmates, Fifth engineers I sailed with) , so think hard & get all your facts right, not only the sweet stories of ice cream uniforms & high salaries from training institutes who are only there to run a business & give a damn about you or your career.

No Job is a Menial Job

Keep an open mind, don’t shy away from anything that comes the way. No jobs are menial and only when you have done it yourself you can excel in that jobs and in future get it done through the crew when you are an officer. Depending on your seniors you might even get to clean toilets as well, even though in today’s scenario things are much better.

You would need first hand experience of all tasks which you will only get when you are cadet as you’d be doing it all, derusting on deck to making entries in log book, cleaning cargo control room to handling important cargo paperwork. There are a lot of things where you need to excel as you’d be giving orders to do same when you are a chief officer or Master.

Managing DLP

I strongly believe,completing the theory aspect of distance learning programme while you’re sailing is a myth. I always ask this question ‘Were you able to complete your DLP onboard?” to all junior officers I’ve sailed with and I’ve never got a ‘yes’.

The point I am trying to make is you need to find a balance between work and completing your DLP. The best way would be to give preference to practical hands on experience to the task than completing it on paper.

Things which a deck cadet should know before joining a ship

1. Revise all your ROR and subjects including calculations of celestial nav, etc taught to you during pre-sea. When you join the ship, most of the people will expect you to know atleast this much. They will not accept your “I forgot as I had to wait for 6months for my ship” excuse.
2. While you’re at it learn Microsoft word,excel and power point at basic level, helps a lot onboard with documentation.
3. Become observant and a fast learner. Most people will expect you to share the load of their job. Observe and learn where things are kept and how specific jobs are carried out as fast as possible. They will not accept the fact that you are just straight from school who knows nothing about working.
4. Do some ship type specific research before joining that ship as it will fasten your learning process.
5. Carry a scanned copy of all your books and notes.
6. Leave your ego aside. As a cadet I did work ranging from cleaning the urinals to receiving the ship owners.
7. Never complain about you not getting proper rest to anyone especially your chief officer, unless you are really uncomfortable and fear it might lead to incident/accident.
8. Make a good impression on your chief officer otherwise he has the power to make your life miserable.
9. Never risk your life as you will not get any Bharat ratna, instead your name will be flashed on all ships in the form of incident reports.
10. Never leave any opportunity to go for shore leave as God knows when you will get the same port and chance to go out.
11. Be proactive and ignore all the negative people you will meet on ships.

Conclusion

There is a lot of data on the internet when it comes to the topic of deck cadets joining their first ship, but I’ve tried to be as real and as raw as one could be. Please notes all these are things are what I agree with and what I complied and depend on a lot of different factors, some of the things might not apply to you.

Lastly all sailors would agree that irrespective of the years a mariner spends at sea, his first ship is always held dearly to his heart.

Safe voyages.