Intro: Welcome to Crew Life At Sea podcast. Here we will share the skills you need to make your experience and adventure out at sea a success, hear inspiring stories from the experienced crew, from all diversities, gain knowledge and know your rights. Be Part of the Crew Life At Sea, and let’s welcome your host, Raymond Crystal.

Ray: Welcome to Crew Life At Sea, the only place where you can find useful information, advice, insights and resources to help inspire you to take that next step in working on a cruise ship. I’ve been doing this for quite a while now so I thought it’s time that we get a new hire and see how it feels to be hired on board a cruise ship and the experiences that they went through as a new hire. All these podcasts that I’ve had are all from experienced people, from well over 5 to 30 years of experience, and today I have with me Preston, who is a new hire and he’s going to tell us a little bit about his experience when he got hired – well, this is actually his first contract – and see what he’s been going through and his process of getting here, and his experience on board. Hello Preston, how are you?

Preston: What’s up, guys? I’m good, and yourself?

Ray: Good. Okay, so let’s first tell the people where are you from?

Preston: I’m from Durban, South Africa.

Ray: Right, and this is your first contract and it’s been an unbelievable adventure for you to have got this far in your life, in getting on a ship, because I’m sure you’ve always wanted to work on a ship for some reason.

Preston: Yes, absolutely.

Ray: So could you tell me a little bit of the experience on how you got from Durban to here?

Preston: I used to work at a University, I was employed as a personal trainer and massage therapist, and during the course of the year Steiner, the company that I’m working for, attended our campus to do a presentation about how to get on a ship to work on board. They did the presentation for us and I took down their details, then I contacted them. They set up an interview for me and I attended the interview. I got through the interview and the next thing I know I’m on board.

Ray: So you only learned how to come in at sea because of those people that came to your place. If it wasn’t for them you would never have taken up this offer, right?

Preston: No.

Ray: That’s lucky for you. So how was the hiring process and how did you go through that?

Preston: Very simple, actually. You just answer a few questions, you talk about yourself and then depending on the position that you are in, you do a practical and that’s it.

Ray: So did they call you, or did you e-mail them and then you had to reply through e-mail and then was it an interview?

Preston: Yes, it was an interview process. You just have to contact them via e-mail. They set up the dates, depending on your location in South Africa and then you attend the interview. It’s not just you, it’s a group of people at a time so you have to a lot of public speaking, and then you do your practical test or examination, and then within a few hours, they let you know if you were successful or not.

Ray: Lucky you, sometimes it takes them weeks, sometimes even months. Sometimes you don’t even hear back from them. Did you have to do any sort of training before you got the job?

Preston: Yes, once you get through from the interview you do a, well, for me, it was a fitness position so you have to do a 3-week training course in Cape Town, which was absolutely gruelling. You have 3 hours of sleep every day, Monday to Sunday, and once you’ve completed that then you are ready to come on board.

Ray: Why is it such a hectic training schedule?

Preston: It’s a lot of work in a short period of time, so you do seminars, you do yoga, Pilates, spinning, boot camp, personal training, have good feet. So there’s a lot of stuff to cover within the 3 weeks.

Ray: Did you have to pay any sort of fees?

Preston: For training yes, you did. I think all in all my cost to get on board came close to R50000.00 so in dollars that is just about $4500.00.

Ray: Give us a rundown on all of that?

Preston: I spent it all on obvious paperwork, the training fees, accommodation, food for the 3 weeks, transportation.

Ray: Air ticket?

Preston: No, Steiner covers your air tickets to the ship and once you’ve completed your contract there, you pay for your flights back home, although there are a lot of hidden costs that they don’t inform you about during the interview process, and the process for you getting on board.

Ray: You’ve got to remember that this is only for your position, as a fitness instructor. Other positions are not that hectic, so don’t think that it’s for everybody, it’s just his specific job. Can you tell me how you got your visa and your medical aid sorted out?

Preston: For my visa, they provided the documentation, we just had to show up at the embassy and it literally took me 15 minutes to get everything approved and my visa took about 2 weeks to get to me.

Ray: And the medical?

Preston: The medical, we just had to show up at one of 2 doctors in South Africa, one was in Cape Town, one in Durban, and that also took about half an hour. You just do a urine test, you fill out like 60 pages of documents which were the longest process of the entire medical, and then you do a few practical assessments of your joints, and that was it.

Ray: Do you also do drug testing?

Preston: Yes, that’s from your urine test and then they give you …

Ray: You didn’t do blood tests?

Preston: No blood.

Ray: What? Normally we have to do blood for drug tests.

Preston: Maybe there was, yes.

Ray: Because you can’t pick up quite a few things, there must be a blood test.

Preston: And there were 2 vaccines, so I’m MMR, Measles, Mumps, Rubella and Yellow Fever, and that was also at our cost, the medical.

Ray: Yes, you see, some companies you bring your medical receipts and they reimburse you.

Preston: Yes. The only thing they reimbursed me was for my visa and that was just half of it, basically, not the full amount.

Ray: So, you get home, you see an e-mail from your agent, you open it. There are hundreds of attachments, you start to open them one by one. Explain to me the feeling that you are going through when you do this?

Preston: Firstly it was exciting because you’re happy, you want to get on board. But then you become overwhelmed, like you said, with those hundreds of pages and documents that you have to open and read through, and there’s a lot of information. You just have to take your time, read each one very carefully and then you follow instructions. But yes, as I said, there’s a lot of documentation.

Ray: Yes, and a lot of e-mailing back and forth for a couple of days, non-stop.

Preston: Yes. So a tip, don’t delete your e-mails as they come along, just keep them because guaranteed, you will need them along the way.

Ray: So, you’re preparing your luggage, how did you prepare for that?

Preston: For me, it’s simply because I’m good with packing, so I actually packed a few days before I left, so I was prepared.

Ray: Okay. It’s 11 o’clock, you still haven’t had an inch of sleep, you just can’t fall asleep, you know that tomorrow you’re taking a flight to some far off destination to start this new adventure that you have found, tell me the feeling and what you went through on the morning that you woke up to leave?

Preston: It was a bit of excitement and again, overwhelmed because initially I was supposed to leave on a Thursday to a particular ship, and then on a Sunday before they called me and said no, I have another ship that I need to go on but I need to leave in 2 day’s time. So even though I was packed they didn’t give me a specific time or date, they just said within 2 days. So the day I had to leave, they phoned me that particular morning so I wasn’t ready, I didn’t shave, I didn’t take out my clothes that I was going to wear on the day, even though I was packed.

So it was all a rush in the morning and I didn’t even get to say goodbye to my family properly, it was just my immediate family and yes, we had to rush to the airport within 1 and a half hours and I live an hour away from the airport.

Ray: You really had a tough time with this one, like out of the blue and you’ll do whatever it takes. That’s why you’re here. So it’s not that easy, you could wait for a couple of weeks, a month, or all of a sudden they give you a call and ‘hey, you’re leaving here in 6 hours, get ready.” Yeah, sure. So you get to this hotel, you checked in?

Preston: I didn’t get a hotel. I was one of the lucky few who didn’t get a hotel because seeing that I had to leave on the day, they informed me on the day, it was an emergency flight, it was the only flight to get to the ship, so I flew 30 hours from Durban, South Africa all the way to Bogota, Colombia. So I reached Colombia at 9:30 at night looking like a zombie, so I had to find a tiny little bathroom at the airport, I had to shave, freshen up, change into my suit and then go straight to the ship. It’s one of the requirements, that you show up with your suit.

Ray: So your travelling experience wasn’t that good? Preston: I didn’t enjoy it. Although the flights were good, in particular, the food was good as well, but 30 hours, it’s not great. It’s unfortunate because mostly when you travel and you’re a new hire or anybody, they always put you in a hotel, at least 1 night so you can recover, shave, shower and feel fresh for the next morning but unlucky for some. What was your experience when you entered the ship and you were welcomed? Or were you not welcomed?