Offshore Friendships
You know that old saying ‘you can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your family’? That’s another saying that doesn’t apply offshore, right up there alongside ‘you don’t have to be mad to work here, but it helps’.
Out here (at sea) we are one big dysfunction-ally functional family. There’s always the older wiser ones, the younger newer ones, the absolute jokers, the story tellers, the boffins, the serious ones and the quiet ones – our dark little seahorses of the offshore brood – moody and mysterious, they can overthink any given situation but, that said, they are often the ones with the darkest humour and the best plans for practical jokes.
We may move from vessel to vessel, campaign to campaign, but the core principles of any decent seafarer are very similar – be kind, be courteous, be supportive, laugh often, forgive quickly, learn fast, do your job to the best of your ability, ask for help when needed and provide help when required – requested or not – we’re good like that.
But our very best trait is our manners. We’ve impeccable manners. We NEVER walk into the messroom at a mealtime – or leave the table – without wishing everyone ‘bon appetite’ or ‘enjoy your meal’. We do not shut a watertight door in another crew members face, and we do not leave our mess for another to clean up. EVER.
These personality traits are absolutely necessary for us to all live together on a floating tub and not want to throw each other overboard (too often). Then there are the ones that, for whatever reason, you are just deeply and instantly in tune with, and it’s not just one or two, the lifestyle that we live does draw a similar type of personality and we are eager to learn about each other’s journeys that led them to the sea, that led them to us.
I’ve met all my closest friends working offshore. One of my closest friends to this day is a Dutch CPT Op that I met on my very first day offshore – he showed me the ropes and kept me safe on more than one occasion, another is an American Stew I met on the Irish sea, an Italian first officer who is like a little brother to me, a Scottish PM has been a close friend for many years – the list goes on and the thing that binds us all is that we understand each other in a way that only other seafarers truly can, warts and all.
But it is more than that, it’s much deeper, we become friends fast out here, we live, eat and sleep together day in, day out for months at a time. We look after each other no matter the race, gender, religion or language. We go through life changing events together when at sea – deaths, births, marriages missed, relationships breaking down or starting up, teen troubles and family trials – we are not an easy bunch for our land lovers to understand and sometimes we are not able to physically be there when needed, this in itself can be corrosive to our onshore relationships and we need our offshore family to keep us sane and help hold our pain.
From our very first day, to our very last we are touched deeply by the crews we work with. We laugh together, work together, solve issues together, sometimes we disagree, but there’s no escaping it, so we resolve it, we forgive, we move on. And the next time we see each other it’s just another patch in the quilt of our offshore life. A patch that becomes part fabric of our journey, the tapestry of our family tree.
Out here (at sea) we are one big dysfunction-ally functional family that chooses each other again and again, and in each other we recognise ourselves, warts and all.
Sonia Carley – Offshore Client Rep