How To Survive At Sea (Ish Willing)

Today's post is going to be a pretty lazy one from my point of view, but hopefully interesting as well. I plan to take advantage of Ish's generosity and ego and ask him (when he sees the post) to fill in the bulk of the post in the comments section.

As stated before, the Sarcastic Weasel has a cruise in his future. Obviously not a fun cruise with show girls, all-you-can-eat buffets, and wave pools, but a cruise on an ONR owned vessel to do some vibrational monitoring using wireless sensing devices.

What I am hoping that Ish will provide, is a handy survival guide for someone of no rank or status (i.e. a grad student) who will be on a Merchant Marine run vessel for a week (or slightly longer). There are things I need to know like, what is the hierarchy, who should I definitely not piss off (besides everyone), what sort of bribes the crew are susceptible to (or do bribes make one appear weak), what kind of unwritten rules should I be aware of, what terminology should I brush up on, is scotch allowed on board, and with relatively light duties, just how the hell does one pass the time for 7-9 days in a big metal box?

Depending in Ish's schedule, level of apathy, and computer access, hopefully, the fun part of this post will arrive soon.

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