You have walked into someone's home

You have walked into someone’s home and felt, before a word was spoken, whether the people living in it were happy.

A ship presents itself in a similar manner.

Nobody signs on intending to be miserable.

For the next two months, or the next ten, that ship is where a seafarer lives. It is where they sleep, eat, argue and miss a birthday nobody at home can reschedule. What makes it a home is what is inside it and who is inside it. Somewhere to train. Something that grows them as people and has nothing to do with the salary they signed for. A way to speak to the people they left behind. Colleagues they can actually talk to when something is wrong.

Mental health is built out of things like these, at sea or ashore. It is no different.

Every standard written for that person on board is a minimum. Minimums were never meant to be targets.

Owners and managers work in a commercially driven market and everybody is trying to make the numbers work. I know that. The arguments about cost are real.

So look at it from the other side.

One seafarer has ten companies on their CV. Another has stayed with the same one for years. Same trade, same conditions, same pay bands.

What is the second company doing that the first one is not?

If you have stayed somewhere a long time, or you know someone who has, what kept them there?