Travel by cargo ship around the world

If you are serious about travel then get trained and crewed on a yacht. I met a lot of refugees from the 99-00 dotbomb. People that were college educated, unemployed, and worn out from the long hours. This was a welcome refuge for them. The hours were great and so were the locations. And the money was totally tax-free.<p>And, as a guy, 90% of their female colleagues were drop dead gorgeous. I really considered calling in work and resigning so I could join a crew on the next boat looking to hire.

Apart from an excellent holiday, this sounds like a great way to get some coding done.<p>Take a laptop, a few books on your favourite languages, come back with a product!

The costs are just too high unless you only seek the romanticism of taking a boat with likely non-English speaking crew for weeks at a time across an ocean. A round-the-world ticket (www.oneworld.com to start) is usually a far better value in terms of seeing many places on a (much more) flexible schedule.

I crewed on a private sailboat for a summer after college and it was amazing: it's a paid adventure with great people in breathtaking places. Even the middle of the ocean is surprisingly beautiful. The most important pre-requisite is a strong stomach. It's likely you'll hit a storm where you will be levitating off your bed at the height of each wave for two days straight: seasickness is completely incapacitating and will make your captain regret taking you onboard. If you pass that and can clean and heat up a pizza, most captains will take you on all expenses paid, possibly with pay. There is a migration of boats from the Caribbean to New England in the spring and back down south in the fall. Try hitting the docks at the stopping over points in St. Barts, Martinique, Bermuda, or Newport.

I've looked at this in the past, and unfortunately it's prohibitively expensive for longer trips. I'd like to go transatlantic at some point, but it costs 2-3x as much as flying, and in fact, even more than a cruise ship (which sounds horrible to me).

Considering that you can ship a container from China to USA for about $3-4K, the quoted prices seem quite high at $125 per day.<p>Sure, food is included, but given that the ship no doubt purchases food in bulk, as well as resupplies itself at the cheapest ports, it would seem that $50 or less per day (perhaps double occupancy) would be a lot more reasonable.

You used to be able to putter around the caribbean on a few of the mailships. Voyages normally lasted a day or 2 and the price was insanely cheap. But just like everything else, as more tourist figured out how the islanders got around a new business opportunity came up. Now the mailships aren't much cheaper then the puddle jumpers.

I recommend reading Christopher Buckley's Steaming to Bambula - though things have changed since then.<p>(<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Steaming-Bamboola-World-Tramp-Freighter/dp/0140099220" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Steaming-Bamboola-World-Tramp-Freighte...</a>)

Another alternative is the last Royal Mail ship: <a href="http://www.rms-st-helena.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.rms-st-helena.com/</a>

I always thought it would be cool but now I am not so certain.<p>Going 55 days without net access would be a deal breaker for me.

"[...] many are happy to take you along for the ride."<p>If you are a woman, sure.

Some more links:<p><a href="http://thetravelersnotebook.com/how-to/how-to-travel-by-cargo-ship/" rel="nofollow">http://thetravelersnotebook.com/how-to/how-to-travel-by-carg...</a><p><a href="http://wikitravel.org/en/Freighter_travel" rel="nofollow">http://wikitravel.org/en/Freighter_travel</a><p><a href="http://www.gonomad.com/transports/0011/miniguide_freighter_voyage.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.gonomad.com/transports/0011/miniguide_freighter_v...</a><p><a href="http://www.gonomad.com/transports/0906/freighter-cruising-experience.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.gonomad.com/transports/0906/freighter-cruising-ex...</a>