Maybe This Week, Maybe Next Week

Robert Gumpert 29/11/2025 Robert Gumpert 29/11/2025

29 November 2025

From the MM&P Hiring Hall

Nate Metcalf, 23. 3rd Mate
MM&P Hiring Hall - Oakland, California
06 October 2025

[I’ve been a member of] the Masters, Mates, & Pilots about a year and a couple of months. Counting the school ships [at sea] around 200 days.

I did a trip on one of the APL (American President Line) ships, and that’s about around 50 days. You hit LA, Oakland, and then Japan, Korea and China. That takes about 50 days.

My first couple of jobs I got out of the Seattle hall, but they were both on the “open board”, not out of Seattle, so I had to fly to the destination. At home I’m an hour away from the union hall, and all the ships in Seattle actually go into Tacoma, even further south. When you finish work at 1am, the last thing you want to do is driving an hour and half home. I’m lucky enough that my girlfriend lives in San Francisco, it’s way easier to drive San Francisco to Oakland. And there are more ships coming in, especially night mating. When the ships come into port for a couple of days we work the cargo at night, and on the weekends during the days, as well.

[My girlfriend] she’s not supper thrilled about that (months at sea). The union has pros and cons, especially when you’re an applicant, and (jobs) are kind of hit or miss. You get what you get, but you don’t have to take a job.

If you were on a strict schedule - 30-90 days on, 30-90 days off - you miss a lot of stuff. If you’re trading off with another person, you don’t have a lot of choice, someone’s going to miss Christmas. Someone’s going to miss Thanksgiving. Where as with the union I just off a ship for six months, and my vacation’s up I can still hang around. I don’t have to go back if I don’t want to [I can night mate, for instance].

Right now I’ve got a couple of weddings I have to stay around for, so I’m planning to night mate for the next couple of months. It’s a lot easier to night mate down here than it is at home.

It’s one of the big benefits of the union, but the girlfriend not exactly thrilled about me going out to sea.

Diffidently not the best industry to be in if you want the healthiest relationship. At least now a lot of ships have Starlink, or email, or internet. I can’t imagine the days before that.

[A good port for a sailor has] easy of transportation. A lot of times the docks are so far away you have to pay $100 for an Uber ride just to get to the city. It’s nice when a city has a closer terminal, but honestly I haven’t been off the ship that much. In foreign ports we’re in port for such a short time, sub 12 hours usually, it’s pretty hard to get off, especially on a container ship. Here some of the APL ships hangout for 2,3, 4 days at a time.

Documents! There’s a lot. You have to renew your credentials every 4 years, or whatever it is, and it was taking 3-4 months to get your credentials (from the Coast Guard). A lot of people will wait until the last second, and then you don’t have your credential and can’t sail. There are a lot and I keep them all in my backpack, and bring them all to the union whenever I’m trying to get the job. Especially for me, every job I’ve gotten with the union is a different company, it’s not like I can just log into my ADP (a ship’s computer Automatic Data Processing), and it transfers. Basically you have to start over again.

I always carry my passport, I got it stolen one time in my backpack. Yeah, I carry everything: my passport, my merchant mariner credential, my TWIC (The Transportation Worker Identification Credential), my everything.

At this point I’ll (ship on) anything. I’m open to anything. The first ship I was on was called the rocket ship. United Launch Alliance, they made rockets in Alabama. It’s Bezos’ company, you know he and Elon are competing for the Starlink, Bezos has his own thing he’s starting. So, they made the rockets in Huntsville, Alabama, and brought them down the Tennessee River, the Ohio River, the Mississippi River, and then up and around Cape Canaveral, Florida where they launch the rockets.

So, I’ll do anything. The only thing I can’t do, I can’t be on a tanker because I don’t have my tankerman TIC yet. You have to have a special endorsement on your license for that. Being a tankerman if you have a spill it’s a big deal, where as a container ship is a little more simple.

When I was on that rocket ship I was really (sea) sick because it was in the river, so the draft was really small - only a 10 foot - and a flat bottom. A container ship is usually 30 feet, and really deep keel so it doesn’t sway as much. In the river you work with the captain, you’re altogether, so it’s a little bit more intense. It was my first watch and we’re getting tossed around. and I had to tell the Captain I got to get out, I got to puke, this is terrible. I was seasick for a couple of hours. That’s the only time I’ve ever been seasick.

Usually on a container ship, they’re a bigger ship. You list (roughly a static/permanent tilt) a lot and roll (roughly refers to the left-to-right swaying motion a ship makes when moving through rough waters) like 10 degrees, but the rolling period is like 30 seconds, or even longer. It’s such a slow roll, so you don’t get that jerkiness that makes you sick. It’s nice and slow, and puts you right to sleep.

When I came in, when I was at school, there was big talk about all these baby-boomers retiring because of COVID. Before 2020 there were a lot of people in the halls, and hard to get a job. Now all those older people have retired.

The summertimes are way easier to ship out because no one wants to work during the summer, they want to home with their families and kids. It really slows down during the winter months. My first two jobs I got sitting in the hall one or two days, but this last one I sat in the hall for two months before I got it. You’re [still] nightmatinig so you’re still making a good amount of money, but obviously a lot more once you’re on a ship. Yeah, in my experience, I mean I’ve only been at it for year, it seems like the winter time it slows down.

It’s hard to get a shoreside opportunity especially when you’re going from making a decent amount of money, and then you’re going to take a pay cut to come work ashore. I mean, I don’t really know what I’d do ashore. The union is working good for me, so I might as well stick with what I know for right now.

Nate Metcalf, 3rd Mate

Photo: Robert Gumpert

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