Travel by cargo ship around the world | Hacker News Reader

Travel by cargo ship around the world

transitionsabroad.com

123 pointsTriinT40 comments

If you are serious about travel then get trained and crewed on a yacht. I met a lot of refugees from the 99-00 dotbomb. People that were college educated, unemployed, and worn out from the long hours. This was a welcome refuge for them. The hours were great and so were the locations. And the money was totally tax-free.

And, as a guy, 90% of their female colleagues were drop dead gorgeous. I really considered calling in work and resigning so I could join a crew on the next boat looking to hire.

Sounds like a nice way to spend my summer before I start work. Does anyone have any personal experience with this? Any resources or tips on how to go about this would be appreciated.

The biggest part is probably location. They aren't going to fly you in for an interview so you have to be in an area that has a yacht industry. This will be Ft. Lauderdale (your best bet), Miami, Palm Beach, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and parts of California. Go to the docks and pound the pavement. I was walking around taking pictures for my job when I inquired about availabilities crews were giving me all sorts of advice. The stories were so fascinating I was ready to call my office and drop everything. You'll find agencies in these areas that will probably want your CV and a passport photo. Appearance is big component of the job. Captains like their crew looking like the cast of a movie.

If you're looking for a summer only thing there are boats looking for crew. They don't pay you, you'll pay for part of the voyage to cover food, landing, and docking fees. Depending on the boat be prepared to work hard. But the payoff is better ports of call.

Try here: http://www.crewfile.com/

I know it's not something you do for the money, but in terms of income, what other kinds of jobs is it comparable to?

I would disagree, 3 of my friends have worked on Luxury Yachts over the past 2 years (5 month placements) out of Antibes (France).

Depending upon your opinion they have been fortunate to work on boats rented out by the likes of Eddie Murphy, The Beckhams, Danielle Steeles family.

Also as they are salaried out of Monaco they receive tax free earnings of ~ EUR3000 / Mth.

If more info is needed then just give me a shout and I will email my friend for contacts. You will most definitely need to obtain a licence though.

Apart from an excellent holiday, this sounds like a great way to get some coding done.

Take a laptop, a few books on your favourite languages, come back with a product!

I wonder what their net access is like? Guess everything’s done via satellite phone, which might get a little expensive.

I suspect that's the reason for the recommendation to pack reference books. :)

I think having regular internet access would ruin the whole point of such a trip to me. The appeal is in the refuge-less disconnect, both from the internet and everything else.

I frequently try becoming a internet fugitive for periods of time, but its long arms eventually capture me again. I believe being in the middle of the ocean would certainly liberate me for a prolonged period of time, however so would going into cottage country in a tent . . . although there is considerably less bears at sea (note that there still is technically a fair amount due to Polar Bears being on ice in mid ocean, hence 'considerably less' and not 'no').

Internet access is both a curse and a blessing, however it tends to lean more towards the former rather than the heavy lean towards the latter that everyone desires.

Go south of the equator. No Polar bears down here.

But you have to watch underwater for frigging birds and there's flying fish! The southern hemispheres wildlife is insane.

I looked at this a couple of years ago - the big handicap for me is that it looks difficult to guarantee vegetarian food. From what I could find you had a good chance of getting away with it, but nobody who'd guarantee "yes, we will feed vegetarians".

You'll travel on a ship fuelled by dead creatures carrying plastic items made from dead creatures, but you wont fuel your body with dead (macroscopic) creatures?

Ever heard of the abiogenic petroleum hypothesis?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenic_petroleum_origin

Until they start mining cows for oil, eating meat tends to promote killing creatures, using plastic doesn't.

The costs are just too high unless you only seek the romanticism of taking a boat with likely non-English speaking crew for weeks at a time across an ocean. A round-the-world ticket (www.oneworld.com to start) is usually a far better value in terms of seeing many places on a (much more) flexible schedule.

I regret my oneworld ticket approach to a 6.5 month backpack break - in retrospect I should have seen far fewer places and got a better feel for the ones I was in. It's also not nice having flights booked so far in advance that it's hard (not impossible) to stick around in the various paradises you come across.

Actually though you have a ton of flexibility on those tickets. If you need to move a date, it's easy enough to switch to any flight with availability in that class, no charge. Also, you can split it up and take half the trip, fly home for a while, then return and continue the trip where you left off. As long as you fly within a year, you can do segments 11 months apart really.

We had to pay £30 for a change, if I recall correctly...

I crewed on a private sailboat for a summer after college and it was amazing: it's a paid adventure with great people in breathtaking places. Even the middle of the ocean is surprisingly beautiful. The most important pre-requisite is a strong stomach. It's likely you'll hit a storm where you will be levitating off your bed at the height of each wave for two days straight: seasickness is completely incapacitating and will make your captain regret taking you onboard. If you pass that and can clean and heat up a pizza, most captains will take you on all expenses paid, possibly with pay. There is a migration of boats from the Caribbean to New England in the spring and back down south in the fall. Try hitting the docks at the stopping over points in St. Barts, Martinique, Bermuda, or Newport.

I've looked at this in the past, and unfortunately it's prohibitively expensive for longer trips. I'd like to go transatlantic at some point, but it costs 2-3x as much as flying, and in fact, even more than a cruise ship (which sounds horrible to me).

I've looked into this and reached the same conclusion. Longer trip? Fewer Amenities? More expensive? It doesn't add up.

(really all I want to do is go fight pirates)

You know that the crews are not only discouraged, but usually not allowed to fight back with real firearms for fear of retaliation ? The pirates are ready to die, after all. The most they'll do is use a fire lance to keep the pirates away or wash them off-board.

> The pirates are ready to die, after all.

Are they? They're willing to kill, but that's different.

Remember, a robber isn't telling you what he thinks that his life is worth, he's telling you what he thinks your life is worth to him.

I'm really meaning Somalian pirates, which have shown repeatedly complete disregards for their own lives. A Western robber is no match.

I would pay money to see this fight.

Cruise ships (and some other ships) generally have armed gaurds. I heard that it is popular among Israelis (after conscription and before working) to work on a cruise ship as armed security.

Considering that you can ship a container from China to USA for about $3-4K, the quoted prices seem quite high at $125 per day.

Sure, food is included, but given that the ship no doubt purchases food in bulk, as well as resupplies itself at the cheapest ports, it would seem that $50 or less per day (perhaps double occupancy) would be a lot more reasonable.

I speculate that the price is that high because they can afford to charge that much. A cargo ship can take only 12 passengers at most... and there seem to be a few 1000s of people who are really into this kind of traveling. Suppy & demand is the most likely explanation for such high prices.

For example, the following company charges $2,500 for a 20-day voyage from Long Beach to Shanghai:

http://www.freighterworld.com/places/fareast.html#LaeiszCAX

If the flight ticket is approx. $1,000 and 20 days of rent in LA are at least $500, then one is paying a $1,000 premium for the experience, which does not sound too much if one does it only once. Travel by cargo ship on a regular basis would be unaffordable, though.

Note that two years ago there were a lot more cargo ships putting around, because the economy was moving that much faster. Meanwhile, air travel had higher demand for the same reason. Presumably travel by cargo ship was less costly then, and that's when many of the people who enjoy this got into it.

I believe the main reason they offer passenger service is that there are some shipments that need a human handler. (Horses, for example) There's definitely demand for passenger berths, albeit not for tourists.

Have you ever been on board a containership? It's insanely optimized for cargo capacity. It's not like they could just make a little room for passengers.

Well, if cargo ships have cabins for passengers, then it's not that optimized, right? It's not about making room for passengers, but about using unused room.

You used to be able to putter around the caribbean on a few of the mailships. Voyages normally lasted a day or 2 and the price was insanely cheap. But just like everything else, as more tourist figured out how the islanders got around a new business opportunity came up. Now the mailships aren't much cheaper then the puddle jumpers.

I recommend reading Christopher Buckley's Steaming to Bambula - though things have changed since then.

(http://www.amazon.com/Steaming-Bamboola-World-Tramp-Freighte...)

Another alternative is the last Royal Mail ship: http://www.rms-st-helena.com/

I always thought it would be cool but now I am not so certain.

Going 55 days without net access would be a deal breaker for me.

"[...] many are happy to take you along for the ride."

If you are a woman, sure.

Some more links:

http://thetravelersnotebook.com/how-to/how-to-travel-by-carg...

http://wikitravel.org/en/Freighter_travel

http://www.gonomad.com/transports/0011/miniguide_freighter_v...

http://www.gonomad.com/transports/0906/freighter-cruising-ex...

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