My name is Oana and I welcome you on my website.

I started blogging a few years ago when I decided to share some of my experiences at sea with my family and friends from home. At that time, I had already touched (more or less) all the continents except Antarctica and I had seen and enjoyed sunrises and sunsets on three Oceans and many small and big seas on both sides of the Equator. My adventures at sea continue.

My big ‘family’ of friends is growing bigger and bigger and, since some of them speak other languages, I decided to take my blogging to the next level and start writing in English. Some of the friends I’d made during my trips asked me to do this for quite a while now and finally I am answering to their request.

I still want to make new friends and share my experiences with many people around the world who enjoy traveling as much as I do, who love the sea and everything it brings to life.

My website is especially dedicated to those of you who are interested in this kind of traveling – voyages on port container vessels, those of you who just dream about such journeys or those who already experienced this adventure.

I am also writing for all my friends at home who have relatives working on commercial vessels and want to find out more about life at sea and especially for my women friends whose husbands are seamen.

Nowadays, most of the maritime companies allows officers to bring their families on board (wives and kids) for a few-week trip and usually the cost for such a trip include only plane tickets to and from the vessel and some other small fees (insurance, transfers or agents’ fee).

I know I am a lucky one. The first time I joined my husband on the ship was in 2004. At that time I regarded the voyage as a simple holiday, without paying too much attention to the life on board and thinking more about the excitement of visiting new countries. I know I was wrong. I didn’t even pay too much attention to my diary – although I started to keep one on my first vessel – and I missed most of the interesting things. Starting with my second voyage at sea, I began to realize that I am quite lucky to have the opportunity of traveling like this and I changed completely the way of noticing things. I started to pay attention to everything around me, from sunrise to sunset, on calm and rough seas, in civilized countries, but even in third world countries. I started to live my live on the vessel and enjoy even the small things that came along the way. I met new people, coming from different parts of the world and some of them became very good friends to me. I learned many interesting things from most of them and I am very grateful for this. We shared many beautiful moments together and I am very happy I had the privilege of celebrating Christmas, Easter, New Year’s Eve and many other special days in such a wonderful family.

After travelling for such a long time I can say without any other doubt that I cannot imagine my life doing otherwise. I hope I’ll get the chance of doing exactly the same thing in the next 10 (or so) years and I’ll be able to continue my adventures and also share them with people who are interested.

Since I started blogging, I became even more aware of the things around me and for this reason, in my English website, I will include also stories from my last three years at sea, as some of the wonderful moments I lived might not happen again. I was lucky enough to experience them once, so I really want to share them with you.

If you are planning to embark yourself as a passenger on a port container vessel, I hope you’ll find here some interesting things about this kind of traveling and also some tips concerning the challenges that might arise from it. You can also find useful information about going out of the ports and visiting the surroundings and the proper way to do it. The most important thing you’ll discover surfing my website is a bird-eye view over the life on board container vessels, so you’ll know what to expect once arrived on board.

If you are a seaman, I also hope that you enjoy my website and find interesting things in it. I know very well how difficult things can be on the ship, with so much work to do and so little free time, but, sometimes you can be lucky and find few hours to enjoy only for yourself. In this case, you can go out for a walk, visit at least the centre of the town, one museum, one garden or park. After that, you will be able to say that you saw more than the cranes and trucks from the port, taking with you lots of memories and photos to share with your loved ones. Not all the ports are like Singapore or New York, but even small and unknown ports (from small and unknown countries) can offer you wonderful moments and they might worth your visit, even if this visit lasts only 3-4 hours.

Passengers and seamen alike can find here useful information about the shortest way to arrive in the city, what’s worth visiting – taking into consideration the short time and strict schedule – where to have a nice and cheap meal, where to enjoy some decent shopping and how much they should pay for the transfers (shuttle bus, taxi).

In some ports around the world, there are seamen’s missions available ready to assist and help you whenever you need. You can find most of these missions in Europe and USA, but also in some other small ports in Asia and Australia. You will find in my website addresses of some of these institutions I visited during my traveling and I hope to discover more of them in the future.

I want my website to be open and free for those of you who have interesting things to share and are willing to do so. You can tell me your opinion about all this, you can share your wonderful adventures or just your most hidden dreams, you can give more clues and information about anything connected with seamen life or passengers’ life on board commercial vessels. The more people are telling about their experiences the better will be for new comers. In the section called Guests’  Stories you can make your voice heard, share interesting things with us or just ask questions. You may find your answers and your stories may be appreciated by people who care and enjoy the same things as you do.

As I still travel at sea, I may sometimes have difficulties in answering back as quickly as I would like. Internet might be very slow or even total absent in some areas and for this reason some time may pass until I post something new or I get to answer to comments or different questions. I am also at the beginning and still need a lot of time to learn and improve things. I want to apologize for all the mistakes I might make along the way and ask you to be patient and supportive.

For those of you who want to know me better, here are some things about me.

My name is Oana and I come from Romania. I love traveling and I love nature – especially if both are connected with the sea. Ten years ago, I had the chance of changing my life and I am very happy I did it. For this, I had to quit my job (which was, anyhow, more like a hobby than a real job) and make some adjustments in my everyday life in order to be free to do the things I love most. I know my life is different from that of most people (especially women), but it was a choice I made and I do not regret it. Now I cannot imagine myself doing anything else, but as future is not ours to decide entirely, I am still aware of the fact that I might be forced to stop at some point. I do not think I will ever be able to adjust to normal shore life and, if the time comes for me to stop travelling on container vessels,  I am sure I will continue living the same adventurous life and I will find a different mean of transportation to fulfill my goals ( some of my closest friends already know what I am talking about).

I am grateful to my parents because they helped me grow into the person I am today by teaching me to appreciate simple life, enjoy nature and always have the courage to change things that do not work in order to be happy and follow my dreams.

Most of all, I am grateful to my husband who makes all this possible by offering me this kind of life and supporting me in everything I do. We embarked together in a wonderful voyage more than 20 years ago and this voyage helped us discover ourselves along with some new territories. We learned to love each other more and more everyday and appreciate every moment we share together. We learned to respect nature and make friends everywhere we walk, so people from different countries may remember us with pleasure. We also learned that simple life is everything you need to feel complete and in good connection with  the Universe.

I hope we still have a lot of interesting discoveries to make, thousands of miles to cover and many wonderful moments to live until our life comes to an end. And if this moment finds us together and also at sea, I will be forever grateful as I will have with me the two most important loves of my life – my husband and the sea.