My personal salutation to seafarers for 2010 is an especially sporting proposition
By Ryan Skinner (email)
I'm one of those people in shipping who hasn't spent a lot of time on ships, or around them. I've gone aboard during the odd naming ceremony, taken a ferry here and there and stumbled around a ship under construction (Emma Maersk...), but that's it. However, I have tremendous respect for seafarers. Every time I was on a ship, the crew was eager to please, sincerely happy to see a guest and full of well-turned thoughts and phrases.
So how, with my limited shipboard experience, do I go about helping out seafarers this year? As I'm no salty dog, I'll stick to my strengths as a bit of a flack: I propose a humdinger of a sporting competition for the world's seafarers. The mariners' Olympics, if you will. And, if there isn't enough interest in events like discus, steeplechase or pole vaulting, perhaps just a monstrous 3x3 basketball tournament.
Why a sporting event? On one of those rare shipboard visits (a car carrier), the mostly Filipino crew was engaged in an excellent game of roundball, and I understood this to be a tradition in the company. Every car carrier had a court and hoop on the top deck. PR guy that I am, I proposed the company set up a tournament, but that turned out to be a no-go. Too many technicalities involved with a global fleet. But maybe if the stakes were higher...?
And, secondly, sports are simply good. I'm an American; therefore, I got an addiction to sports in my mother's milk. Competition, comraderie, physical and mental health - all great things that flow from sports, so I wish more of these things for our hard-working seafarers.
Photo credit: US Navy
Alas, I lack the resources to make this happen, but - given the idea - maybe someone else wants to give it a go? In the meantime, I encourage any shipping company or seafarer to send in a picture of his team (basketball, badminton, soccer, rugby, clay pigeon-shooting, what have you) and I'll publish it in a sister blog and upload it to a flickr account set up precisely for that purpose.
This year, I say to the world's seafarers: Goooooooooooooollllllllaaaaaaa!
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