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A typical day at sea

You stand a watch, often four hours on and eight off, around the clock. In the engine room it is 100 degrees, loud enough that you wear ear protection, and you walk the machinery reading gauges, taking temperatures and logging everything. Between watches comes maintenance: pulling a pump apart, changing filters, chasing an alarm that keeps going off at 3am. You eat in the mess with the same twenty people for months. When something breaks in the middle of the ocean, nobody is coming to help, so you fix it with what is aboard.