What the Seafarer’s Life Is Like Beyond the Ocean Views

seafaring

12 Mar

“It’s not always the life I want, but it’s the only one that makes sense to me right now”

I used to think “seafarer” sounded like a word from an old storybook. Someone with a weathered coat and a pipe, maybe. Someone who charted maps by starlight and didn’t flinch in a storm.

Then I became one.

A seafarer is anyone who works on a ship. That’s the simple version. Some spend months transporting oil across oceans. Others ferry passengers to tropical islands, scrub engine rooms in silence, or keep watch on the bridge through the night.

For crew members, life at sea comes with its own mix of challenges and routines.

A seafarer’s life runs on port calls, safety drills, early mornings, and long stretches of open water. Most of the time, it feels like just work: wake up, show up, repeat. But over time, it becomes something more. It’s not just a job title; it’s a way of life.

This is what it means to be a seafarer. Or at least, what it’s meant for me.

What does a day in the life of a seafarer look like?

It depends who you ask.

A deck officer’s day starts before most of the ship is even awake, navigating in darkness, filling out paperwork by the glow of radar screens. A steward might be hauling linen carts before sunrise. An engine cadet could be sweating three decks below, adjusting valves in a space no one else ever sees. For cruise ship crew like me, days blurred between guest smiles and back-of-house stairwells.

But no matter the role, the pattern settles in quickly: work, eat, work again, eat again, sleep if you can. Repeat. The sea doesn’t care if it’s a public holiday or a weekend. Everything runs on shifts. Time zones don’t mean much, and days off are rare, if they exist at all.

There’s a kind of strange comfort in that rhythm, though. You learn the timing of sunrise just by the colour of the hallway light. You figure out how to eat a full meal in five minutes, and how to nap in even less. Sometimes the most exciting part of your day is finding peanut butter in the crew mess or spotting land after two weeks of nothing but ocean.

You don’t really “finish work” as a seafarer. You just clock out and stay on the same ship, where your bed is a few doors down from the job you can’t leave behind.

And somehow, that becomes normal.

What are crew quarters like on ships?

It depends on the ship, and where you sit in the hierarchy.

On some vessels, crew cabins are so small you can touch all four walls without taking a step. On others, you might get a bit of extra space, maybe even a porthole. Some senior officers have what you could almost call apartments, with their own sitting area and private bathroom. But for most seafarers, the cabin is just a bunk, a desk, and enough room to turn around without bumping into your roommate.

My own cabin changed with every contract. Sometimes I had a top bunk under the air vent. Sometimes I had a bottom bunk next to the fridge-sized wardrobe we both shared. I’ve lived in cabins where the shower and toilet were basically one square metre, separated by a plastic curtain. I’ve also had a single cabin once, though I only slept there five hours a night, so I barely noticed.

Every seafarer learns little tricks to make their space feel more livable. Hooks on the wall. A towel over the mirror. A fan wedged into the corner. I once knew a guy who brought his own party speaker, and a woman who kept reed diffuser below her various skincare products.

The truth is, you don’t spend much time there anyway. Your cabin is mostly for sleeping. Or hiding, when the ship gets overwhelming. It’s your only private space in a world that moves constantly and never really belongs to you.

Still, after a long shift, pulling back that thin curtain around your bunk can feel like the best kind of relief. Not quite home, but close enough.

How physically demanding is the job?

It adds up. Even when it doesn’t look like much on paper.

Most seafarer jobs involve being on your feet for long hours, sometimes twelve or more. Deckhands are out in the elements chipping rust or securing lines. Engine crew work in hot, cramped spaces that smell like fuel and metal. Cooks and stewards in the galley prepare hundreds of meals a day, working through shifts that blur into each other.

On cruise ships, there’s also the hotel department – cabin stewards, waiters, laundry crew – roles where the workload is high and breaks are short.

But even without that extra layer, life onboard is built around repetition. Maintenance never stops. Cleaning never stops. Watchkeeping never stops. You move through tight spaces, shifting decks, narrow stairwells. You get used to the motion, but your body never really gets a day off.

The physical challenge isn’t always dramatic. It’s not one big task; it’s a hundred small ones that keep repeating. Over time, the strain settles into your shoulders, your knees, the way you walk. You stop noticing the weight until you’re off the ship and realise how strange it feels to sit still.

And yet, most of us don’t talk about it much. Maybe because it becomes routine. Or maybe because fatigue just feels like part of the job. You don’t complain about it. You just pace yourself. Drink more coffee. Count the days to shore leave. Carry on.

What makes life at sea mentally tough?

Every seafarer handles it differently, but the quiet gets to most of us eventually.

You can go hours without speaking to anyone outside your team – days, sometimes, if your job is isolated enough. On some ships, internet is limited or expensive. Even when you do get online, the time zones rarely match up with the people you miss.

Some cope by keeping busy. Some retreat into their cabins and just wait it out. Others go through cycles – motivated one week, burnt out the next.

It’s not always the big things; it’s the build-up of small ones – missing birthdays, skipping meals, feeling invisible. The way every day blends into the next, with no weekends or proper breaks. Even shore leave can feel rushed, like you're chasing the idea of rest instead of actually getting it.

Most seafarers won’t tell you when they’re struggling. We’re used to getting on with it, to putting on a face and powering through. But the silence isn’t just in the ocean. It’s in us too, sometimes.

Can a woman be a seafarer, and what challenges do female seafarers face?

Yes, she can.

Some ships have women in almost every department, from engine to entertainment. On the cruise ships I’ve worked on, that was pretty normal. But other vessels, especially in commercial shipping, might only have one or two women onboard, or sometimes none at all.

Safety is one thing. But so is basic comfort. On some ships, shared bathrooms or awkward cabin layouts make it difficult to assign women to certain areas. I know of at least one ship in the ex-fleet where female crew weren’t usually placed – not because of danger, but because the setup just didn’t work well for us.

There are also smaller things that pile up. Limited access to proper hygiene products. Comments that toe the line between casual and inappropriate. The assumption that you’ll choose “lighter” work, or that you’ll smile more. None of it’s new – but it still adds weight.

That said, many women do thrive at sea. Some are officers, some are deckhands, some work behind the scenes. Most are just doing their jobs like everyone else, getting through the shift, learning the ropes, counting the days to sign-off.

It’s not always easy. But it’s possible. And the more of us who keep showing up, the less anyone can pretend we don’t belong here.

Um, what about emergencies at sea?

I wasn’t worried. Not at first.

A couple of years into working on ships, I heard that one of our older vessels – my mother ship, the one I started on – had been hit by a storm. A bad one. It was smaller than the others in the fleet and didn’t handle rough seas quite the same.

Emergencies at sea don’t happen every day, but they’re always possible.

Fires are one of the biggest risks. Every crew member, no matter their job, trains for them. We do drills so often they feel like part of the routine: find the nearest call point, secure the area, head to your muster station. I’ve done drills half-asleep, in full coveralls, gripping a lifejacket at noon...

Piracy is another thing we’re briefed on, though it depends heavily on the route and type of ship. Cargo vessels passing through high-risk zones are more exposed. Cruise ships are generally faster and better protected.

Most of the time, though, the emergencies are smaller. Man overboard. Medical situations. You learn not to panic. You grab your gear. You follow the routine you’ve rehearsed a dozen times.

No one goes to sea expecting disaster. But you prepare anyway. Because if something does happen – weather, fire, piracy – you won’t have time to look it up.

How long is a seafarer contract?

There’s no single answer. It depends (yes, I’ve said that a few times already – but it really does) on your rank, your department, your company. But most seafarers know what it feels like to count time in contracts, not calendars.

Six months is common. Three isn’t unusual. Some contracts stretch to ten, eleven, depending on your role or if your reliever gets delayed.

I once worked with someone who had cancelled their one-month vacation to work back-to-back contracts.

The strange thing is how normal it starts to feel. You live in this rotating rhythm: join ship, do the job, count the days, sign off, go home, repeat. You learn to celebrate halfway points and quiet days. You get used to missing holidays, weddings, monsoon season back home.

Some people call it a sacrifice. Others call it strategy. Most just accept it. This is the deal you make with the sea: you give it your time in big blocks, and in return, you get space between contracts to reset – if you’re lucky, really rest.

A few months on land can feel like a full lifetime. And then suddenly, it’s time to pack your bags again.

Why seafarers matter, and why so many still choose this life?

You don’t see most of the work we do. That’s the point. The ship runs, the goods arrive, the guests enjoy their holiday, and the world keeps moving – because someone below deck showed up to make it happen.

Seafarers carry fuel, grain, medicine, cars, the container with your online order. We clean cabins, maintain engines, scrub the decks no one ever walks on. We make coffee at 6am and do engine checks at midnight. We wait in port for paperwork to clear and sail through time zones most people couldn’t point to on a map. And when the job’s done, we disappear again. Another crew signs on. The rhythm continues.

It’s easy to forget that most of the world moves by sea. Or that there are people behind it.

People choose this life for a few reasons. Most do it for money, others for adventure, or the hope of sending their child to university. For most, it starts out as necessity, and then becomes familiarity. You get used to living in chapters – onboard and off, at sea and on land.

But whether you signed up with a dream or a deadline, the sea leaves its mark. It teaches you how to be alone without feeling lonely. How to stay calm when things go wrong. How to appreciate quiet moments – your first coffee after a long watch, a sunrise no one else sees.

I won’t say it’s for everyone. It’s not. But for those who stay, something out there keeps calling them back.

Not loud, but steady. Like the hum of the engine. Like the tide.

The seafarer’s life wasn’t something I dreamed about. It just became part of my story. It’s been the adventure of a lifetime. Strange, demanding, repetitive, sometimes beautiful. And no matter where I go next, I don’t think I’ll ever look at the sea the same way again.