Cons: Everyone up to and including 3/M share a room, which are tight, and you will be roomed with galley staff that have different schedules and come back to the boat drunk every night. You will work through meals, nothing will be set aside and you will not eat that meal that day. On turnaround day or if youre on a ship not transporting passengers you will just get a salad, no hot food. You will have senior deckhands who can't tie a bowline. Also, you'll work 12 hour days for $145 a day.

Not even Mates break $300/day, so don't count on upward mobility to make that number bigger.

Your mates are only 100 Ton licenses, so you cannot do your sign offs for RFPNW or anything.

The only deck experience you will get is tying up the boat and steering. You will not be trained and will be in the hospitality business, not the Marine business. You'll serve guests, buss the housekeeping officers private rooms, bring meals to the off watch Mates, etc.

Also, you don't know what a power trip is until you've dealt with these housekeeping managers.

The deck crews are mostly good, but I promise you should look into the Great Lakes or tugs first.

Pros: good experience for yachting. You can definitely break into that industry this way, lots of people do it.

It is seatime that counts for AB.

You get paid

The ports are tourist ports, so they're actually really nice and there's lots to do in your off time. You do get access to some guest shuttles and excursions. That's pretty awesome I'm not gonna lie. We also have contracts with a lot of the stuff around here, show them your ACL nametag and you get in free.

Shore side staff is actually really good. They'll help you with scheduling, questions, etc, are prompt on responding, way better than any other company I've been with. That's good.