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A typical day

Watches run in four or six hour blocks, and you work them around the clock, so a normal day might be four hours on the bridge at 4am and another four at 4pm. On watch you navigate, monitor radar and traffic, handle radio calls and keep the log. Off watch there is cargo planning, safety drills, maintenance paperwork and inspections. In port you supervise loading, mooring and sometimes the cargo watch overnight. You eat and sleep about twenty metres from your workplace, with the same twenty people, for weeks.