So as of last weekend I am officially a nomad for the next year and a half. I'm all done with classes, and just 110 more days of sea time before I can write my license exam. I'll get a few weeks of that time on the Training ship around the great lakes and then in the middle of June I'll head out to Oakland, CA to catch the ship I'll do the rest of the time on.
I'm sailing on the SS Lurline (middle of the page) for Matson Navigation, a steam container ship that carries container freight from Oakland to Honolulu and back. So the scenery and shore time will be terrific, and I should learn a bunch too. There's GPS tracking for each of the ships, so you can check in to see where I'm at on the same website.
Once I have all my time in I'll spend about a month back in Michigan, preparing for the license exam, taking the license exam, and waiting for the Coast Guard to issue my license after I've passed. Things are still a bit uncertain after that, but right now I'm leaning toward taking my first job with the Military Sealift Command (MSC), which is basically a civilian branch of the Navy. For cost savings, nearly all non-combat ships (oil tankers, ammunition, supplies, tugs, transport) are run by civilian mariners with a much smaller crew than the Navy would use. Its not a terrific job, but I would be working a *lot* (approximately 10 months of the year sailing), which would allow me to pay off my debts quickly, and accrue some experience and sea days to advance my license quickly as well. So by doing a year to a year and a half I could actually be "caught up" financially for the first time since age 15, and maybe get a chance to get ahead, at which point I would start working *much* less.
So anyway, I'll be around here and there, but I'm essentially either living on a boat or staying at someone's house for a few weeks until Fall of 08 at least. So if I'm even more unresponsive than normal, you'll know why.