As a female seafarer (26 years at sea), I know exactly where she's coming from. Never mind touching, the times I've sat and talked about anything other than work (non-sexual, just friendly) have invariably resulted in at least one or two crew members either taking it as an invitation to harass me or assault me, or caused friction with the rest of the crew.

In my experience, I can be friendly, but I have to stay distant for safety (mine) and discipline (the whole crew).

This is interesting, were you the captain for many of those years? I could totally understand a crew member being antisocial, but it seems like the crew would resent a leader who acted this aloof even if they were doing it for the reasons you mention. It just seems very different than the usual distance that hierarchy creates.

I've only done a few casual sailing trips where everyone got nude as soon as we were out of sight of land and it was so cramped you'd have to be a contortionist not to touch anyone. A tanker ship or something would be vastly different, but it still seems like there would be plenty of situations, e,g, rough weather, where you need you need to be willing to touch other people. I doubt you'd get on a crab fishing vessel if other crew members refused to touch you.

No, I worked my way up from deckhand to chief mate on deep sea cargo ships. Got my master's ticket in January (finally).

The crew don't generally resent it - I'm friendly and approachable, just distant. I shut them down when they ask personal questions, but I listen if they want to talk about their problems. In a public area. With the door open. The rest of the time, I study, work, eat and sleep. It helps that I'm usually on 00:00-0600 & 12:00-18:00 watches, so I'm working during two meals and sleeping during the third.

Where there's a practical reason for physical contact, of course I touch people. Apart from anything else, I'm often the medical officer, but there's a difference between, "Help me with this mooring line," and, "I'm having a bad day, can I have a hug?" Even if I really could do with a hug.

And the types guys who do get in a huff about it? They're invariably the same personality types that make that rule necessary.

Thanks for sharing, I can easily believe that. On a side note, how does a seafarer end up on hackernews? (I know nothing about your profession).

Lol. Fair question. I got lost online one day and ended up here. I like the relative civility and thoughtfulness of the discussions, so I usually lurk.

I'm also the default on-board IT support/education person, and I learn a lot here that helps me with that. I managed to get several computer-security-related changes pushed through a few ships back based on hackernews references.

Thanks for posting! Mixing in perspectives like yours contributes a lot to this being an interesting forum. Any pointers for techie types who are interested in marine work?

A bit tangential: do you know of an open, or just inexpensive to use for brief periods, source of AIS data from satellites? I'm keeping an eye out for a boat (Evohe) returning, it would be great to have a few days of warning before they show up.

There's a growing demand in marine tech development and marine autonomous surface ships (MASS), which I've been following with interest. They generally need seafarers with an understanding of tech, and techies with an understanding of the sea.

If you're interested in going to sea, it depends on your background. If you want to work in the deck department, the simplest sector to get into is yachting; if you've got an electronics background (electrician/electrical engineer), you can often get a reduction in the sea-time requirement to become an electro-technical officer (ETO). Since there's a severe shortage of ETOs at the moment, that would be the best option. If you just want to get to sea ASAP, cruise ships always need IT folk to keep things running (well, not during the pandemic, but in normal times), and I volunteer with Mercy Ships (mercyships.org) who also always need IT folk (and electricians, plumbers, cooks, etc.), even during the pandemic.

You can track AIS near base stations on https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:-12.0/cent...

If Evohe is a voluntary observing ship for the met bureau (many merchant ship are), you can track them deep-sea on https://sailwx.info/shiptrack/shiplocations.phtml based on their last report (6-hourly reports). I hope that helps.

Mercy Ships looks very interesting indeed! I had checked marinetraffic.com, but the free version seems to only show updates for vessels near to shore (ports?). Evohe incidentally just came in range within the last day or two. Great group of folks, they do a lot of conservation in the subantarctics. Evohe's somewhat-dated website is http://www.expedition-sailing-vessel.com/

Thanks for the pointers, and drop me a line if you're ever in sunny Dunedin! I'm firstname.lastname at gmail dotcom.

Yeah, that's because LRIT (long range information transponder) is always a paid subscription, while AIS is free. Something to do with security.

Evohe looks great! If they're ever looking for crew, let me know. If you've got any questions about Mercy Ships, feel free to ask - I'm sockysock79 at gmail dot com

I can't get home to NZ 'til the borders reopen, so I'm volunteering on a ship in the meantime. I'll touch base next time I'm in Dunedin :)

Just curious, what do you do for a living? Have you ever done professional work where your life is on the line constantly?

I'm an academic who has never been to Antarctica.

But I've done at least one mountaineering expedition (recreational not professional) every year for the past 30 years, where our lives would have been on the line if we had incompetent people with us, even taking precautions there have still been a handful of questionable moments over the years. I've only done 3 long-haul type expeditions that were 4+ months. I also worked as a guide for 2 years back in my 20s on much less technical trips, but those were always the most dangerous because you have people you don't know who have varying skill levels and experience.

In my experience (other than the guide work) we never had a de facto leader unless one member was vastly more experienced in general or had more previous experience with a given region or specific route.

That's obviously different than being in a research station with a large group of people for a year. But I certainly wouldn't feel comfortable leading an expedition to Antarctica if I had only seen snow once before as was apparently the case with the author of this article. Also, on real expeditions (not just living in a research station) you are constantly touching other members of your group, it's absolutely necessary and there's no way around it.

I realize there are going to be differences between a research station gig and even a moderately technical alpine route, but this woman's approach just seems unreasonable.

I can understand how an Antarctic station might look on the surface like a mountaineering trip, but in my experience (a less serious climber than yourself, have deployed to the Ice for the US program on both sides of the logistics/science line) there's actually not much in common between the two, I guess outside of the small field camps which are almost(?) always summer-only affairs and usually run by mountain guides.

There's a great book, Big Dead Place, which is the best window in to the USAP culture that I've come across. It's a bit dated, but I can assure you that the crazy sorts of things in that book still happen - it's shocking/beautiful that it works at all.

Ah okay, I guess I didn't realize how different they were. Thanks for the info! I'll be sure to check out that book, it sounds fascinating.

I really don't think you can compare recreational experiences to professional experiences here. I see that you've done some cool stuff, but it really isn't the same as you can't always choose your team mates for a variety of reasons, which is why women have to take extreme care.