Subseastu's long emigration story

Well ever since my husband's been on 4:4 or 5:5 but there is the odd 6:6 once in a while. It's the ship crew (captain, etc) that work long hitches going on for months without seeing land.

Yes blue_acid I'm an ex-doodlebugger

Do you get much contact with him while he is on the boat?

Sorry for highjacking subseastu's thread but after leaving offshore seismic jobs, what is next? My husband is on his 8th year already and is chief.. we do want to start a family

JohnAsh, thanks to technology, we still do but a lot less like the normal LDR couple. There is the 20minute phonecall every week that we seem to abuse to high heavens. Plus there is email, FB chat, iMessage too. No video calling or much photos though as the boat's internet seems to be stuck on 56kbps

I used to do 6 weeks but used to also do trips on pipelay spreads and once did 110 days without hitting the wall (coming into port). It seems a bit weird to say now after the passage of many years since that trip but I actually kissed the ground in Sharjah, UAE when I got in.

^ I'm guessing you are part of the technical or mechanical team? My husbands sits on his bum all day analyzing data hahaha

There are quite a few of us on this forum with experiences offshore. Stu of course is still doing it.

I once went on R&R with a Filipino technician off a seismic vessel. When we arrived in Manila he had all sorts of stress with the immigration/customs people there wanting "gifts" from his trip away working.

Ok good. I had imagined the boat loosing comms easily with heave, pitch and roll.

Is he a Geophysicist? ( say that with a lisp eh )

aposhark, it does happen but less prevalent now since the BI and BoC had overhauled their staff. Fortunately, my husband has never encountered such a thing.

JohnAsh, it does happen. I dn't even make "tampo" anymore when he suddenly disappears or goes offline. It's a part of being a sailor's wife so they say

My wife wouldnt cope with it. My ex wife did though.

Morning all
Thought I'd best ump in again on this. Strange coming on here and getting used to the time difference!

Blue acid, I'm a navigator by trade but have moved to the dynamically positioned side of things (basically sit on my bum all day in the A/C looking important!). I now work on a drillship offshore Mozambique o a 4/4 rota but when I first started I worked on a little ROV / survey boat "Kommandor Subsea". That was 6 / 6 rota in the north sea many tris on night shift and not pleasent in the winter. I had one v scary shift that I'll not go into but generally things are ok. I've always felt safe regardless of where I've worked. Communications these days do help a lot, but its not at long ago I was limited to a 15min call home a week. This is why I've had to go with iphones basically becauseI know facetime works at work. If I knew anything fm android worked I'd be onto a samsug phone like a shot.

There is plenty of shoreside work out there and I'm sure your husband has plenty of contacts, one thing to be aware of though is wages tend to be lower than working at sea.

As a slight aside the longest trip I did was 7 1/2 months on the RFA Fort Austin. That was a long time away from home but wasn't too bad as I was young and single and could act like a sailor should!!!

Comms are pretty good these days John. We use Craproc at work

Thanks for all the comments folks.

Part 2 hopefully coming soon...........after I've done the ironing

We'll finish in Mozambique middle of next year then apparently we're of to Kenya! Should be interesting. We will of course be down by the head with security personnel.

subseastu, good thing Facetime works for you. We did try video calling but the internet in their ship is too slow for that.

Yeah, he does have contacts though I think he wants to try out something different but still inline with his geophysicist job title. We have looked at different jobs and it is a lot less pay plus tax. As of the moment, he doesn't pay any so might be lucrative to stay in his current job for a little while more.

My husband has sworn off Africa and has refused to work there. They had a survey in Brazil but is now moving towards Trinidad.

They certainly do employ Geophysicists onshore. A long time ago, my first job after school, i used to draught up their maps and diagrams that they created from their seismic data. It seems that most, if not all oil companies employ them onshore. And they do get paid well even if it isnt as much as they do offshore.

I see. What is Craproc?

I was last on a floating rig in 2007 and comms would always drop out when the weather got rough causing the rig to move about a lot. We had data going around the world realtime from a satellite dish. I suppose they have found a way round that?

My wife Skypes her mom in the Philippines, wifi to wifi. She has an iphone and her mom a Samsung.