Terms of seafarers' contracts - short-term or long-term

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As a seafarer, at some point everyone has a question in their heads - what would be better, go for a longer term and make more money, or agree to a short-term contract, not earn much, but spend more time at home. Of course, in many respects the term of the contract depends directly on the position and specialty for which you are applying. Let's try to evaluate contract options simply by offer options.

For greater clarity and simplicity, let's take one of the first sites in Google search results for the query "vacancies for seafarers" - www.ecrewingonline.com. Since there is no option for sorting by dates, we will just look at the offers that are currently available. Even with a cursory glance, it is striking that the most common proposals for seafarers of different specialties for a period of 4 or 6 months. These are standard contracts and are the most common in maritime practice. We will not dwell on them in detail, this is a typical practice for shipping companies of any caliber.

Short-term contracts

A little less often, but more often than short-term contracts, there is a 5-month contract, which is less standard, but for someone even a month earlier going ashore will be a significant advantage over half-year contracts.

We meet the first job offer for three months already on the 6th issue page and it will be a Master / Captain - Jack-Up Barge vacancy. Let me remind you that Jack-Up Barge is not a “barge” in a broad sense. The vessel is a self-lifting installation, which is firmly installed on the bottom due to the retractable support-columns. It is not hard to guess that these types of ships are used as drilling rigs on the oil and gas shelves. By applying for this vacancy, you will be able to receive 600 USD daily.

We see the next offer from the same company on the next issue page. And this is also a vacancy for Master / Captain at Oil / Chemical Tanker. Also 3 months, only with a monthly salary of 14,000 USD.

And already on the 10th page (we will not look further, I think, for the 100 vacancies for seafarers viewed in the search process, the distribution of such offers is already clear) we see three offers at once with a contract for 2 months. These are the vacancies for Crane Operator, Second Engineer and Third Engineer. And also on Jack-Up Barge (though from another company). Payment is also made daily in the range from 155 to 239 USD.

Job market for seafarers

What conclusion can be drawn from this? The job market for seafarers is replete with offers for a 4-6 month contract. There is nothing surprising here, since due to the fact that sea cargo transportation is not the fastest way of transportation, even only one flight can take up to six months and it is not profitable for companies to hire a crew for a short time. In fact, this very reason is the main one in the case of hiring a crew for a short time - since vacancies are mainly available for a short term on Jack-Up vessels, this is, in fact, working on a rotational basis on a drilling rig. It is likely that at the same time, agreements for further work are pre-signed for 3 months, after 3 or something similar.

Let's summarize: there are vacancies for seafarers for a period of 2-3 months. This is not to say that there are many of them, but they really are. As a percentage of the total ship jobs market, short-term contracts will make up about 5-7 percent of all offers. Therefore, if you are targeting just such contracts, it is likely that you will have to spend enough time looking for them. But, in any case, let's not forget about the saying - "he who seeks, he will always find."