Seamester: Australia to South Africa - 90 Days

My biggest advice is to say yes to anything and everything, or else, you may regret missing out on something. Whether it is helming the boat, helping cook, helping staff with something once at a new location, or doing what you might think is the worst job to have.

Say yes to every single opportunity you can and you'll get the most out of this experience as you can.

There are generally two kinds of days.

The first being on passage, which is scheduled into watch teams. You'll spend 3-4 hours on deck on watch driving the boat, doing boat checks and on bow watch. Following that, you have 6-8 hours off watch which is filled with sleep, classes, homework or taking a bit of time to yourself.

The second type of day is a shore day. By that I mean you're on anchor or on a dock. During this type of day, you may have a class or exam, you will spend some time in the area you're in and you will likely have an excursion at some point as a group.

My biggest fear was probably being nervous about juggling my time correctly as I've always struggled with that. Specifically on passage, where you're on an irregular schedule, running the boat, and taking classes.

Passage life turned out to be my favorite part of the entire trip due to how structured it actually is.

It's a very unique environment obviously and is not without its challenges. It's because of the challenges that you learn so much about yourself and your team around you though.

What I love looking back at are the pictures of the beginning and the end of the trip. In the beginning, it was a group of strangers who were all in a location they were unfamiliar with and getting settled which makes the picture look a bit stiff. But our last picture is us having a family dinner out at a restaurant on one of the last nights, recounting stories and memories together.

Since 1998, I have been involved on some level with every student that has sailed with Sea|mester.

The best stories I have all involve Sea|mester being the catalyst for a student to make a huge shift in their trajectory to make the leap to become the person they want to be. From a student who came to us freshly out of dealing with some of life's hardest situations and then wrote to say they were living their dream working in wildlife preservation on an African game preserve. To a student who went on to captain their own small vessel and is looking to work up to being the captain on the Sea|mester vessel they first sailed on, students learn and grow aboard our vessels in a way that they cannot do on a college campus.

I would choose to sail on our voyage from Australia to South Africa. Crossing the India Ocean is a monumental achievement and one that most humans cannot easily arrange. The longer ocean passages involved provide great sailing and the islands we visit are remote enough that some don't have scheduled air flights. That is a rarity in the ever-shrinking world.

Our staff is on program 24/7 for up to 90-days when they are running our voyages. I often describe our crews (students and staff) as families and that brings with it all the smiles, laughs and great times that a family goes through. It also means there will be harder days. Days that, if we were not a family, people would not be committed to seeing the hard days through and would not be there 'no matter what' for each other.

Our staff is always there for the students and each other. That is hard! I am proud of our staff every day for their commitment to the ship and her crew.

Compassion, commitment, and professionalism.

In over 20 years of operation, Sea|mester has operated very successfully in the study aboard and gap year industry due to our core commitment to running safe, engaging, transformational and educational experiences worldwide. Our history and experience in the maritime world are unmatched and we continue to grow our offerings responsibly and with our core principles in focus.