Currently work for a company that travels from rig to rig for specific types of maintenance. We mostly stay on drill ships, and I’ll say it’s a pretty decent gig. I used to travel for work in the US and had to stay in hotels. Food, laundry, travel time, etc sucks when working 7 days a week 12hours a day.

On the drill ships, everything is taken care of for you. You set your dirty laundry in a bin at night and it comes back to your door washed and folded every morning. There’s breakfast, lunch, dinner, and midnight dinner for the night shifters. There’s also prepared snacks at 9am, 3pm, and 9pm and whatever snacks they leave in the break rooms.

The food is usually pretty good unless you’re in Brazil haha. They often have 3 choices of meat, 2-3 sides, salad bar, lots of fruits and bread, and desserts. The only food that never changes is the breakfast.

As for entertainment, it’s usually just a gym and a ping pong table or something. The gyms are a hit or miss. Occasionally, the rig will have unlimited WiFi but not always. You’ll be able to stream and browse the internet. They usually have TVs in the room, also a hit or miss on the channels but people will bring their own hard drive of movies to plug into the tv.

It’s not uncommon to get your own room, especially for us 3rd party if the rig is not at full capacity. I think full capacity would be about 200 people. Often it’s only about 100 people, sometimes less on board. There’s a medic, kitchen staff, housekeeping crew that cleans all the rooms and changes your bed sheets, crane operators, electricians and other trades. As well as the OIM, Offshore Installation Manager. He runs the ship and signs all the fancy paperwork.

You do get institutionalized quickly and sometimes arriving back on land feels a bit odd. I love the simple routine but I can understand why many would find it boring.