MSC Cadet Shipping

[buckybosun]

Can anyone give me their opinion/shed some color on shipping out with MSC as a cadet on an oiler?; compared with a OSG, Shell, etc?

[Usafb]

I shipped with MSC twice as a deck cadet. I was on Tippecanoe and Guadalupe. Both oilers. That's actually how I got my PIC endorsement. I really enjoyed both times. Great experience. Crew was nice too. On both oilers, we had crew over 100. I personally recommend it. You'd be making $350 every two weeks, plus $200 for danger payment depending which ports you'd be visiting. There was basketball hoop on flight deck, library, gym, lounge on every deck.

[CMA_Decky]

Depends on what you want to do after school. If you think you might wanna go MSC for a couple years, definitely go for MSC because it gives you more "points" in the hiring process. I know when I cadet shipped on the Guad the W/O's were really good about teaching me the first couple weeks then giving me the conn and coaching me through the watch. You'll also get to do things with MSC that you'll never see in the commercial world like UNREP's and flight ops. If you get on a ship overseas, at least a west coast boat anyways, you'll most likely be in areas where you'll see more traffic then you ever will in the US. However, if you get on an oiler, you'll be seeing basically what a tanker looked like thirty years ago. There's on IG system, vapor recovery system, enclosed sounding system, etc. The running joke in our tankers class at CMA is that the teacher would put up a slide showing the progression of a system and say, "you'll never see this again, unless you work for MSC." Even the new though the new T-AKE's have a vapor recovery system and IG system no one uses it (the cgo mates/engineers hide behind the fact that DFM and JP-5 have high flash points). All that being said, I wouldn't trade in my cadet shipping or current employment for anything, I'm having a blast, getting to travel, spending more than 24 hours in port (except in the persian gulf, $%#! that place), and learning a ton. On an MSC ship, you'll still be the step child on the ship, but you won't be the red-headed step child.