Life as a Deckhand on a Tugboat

First off, what is a deckhand?

A deckhand is someone who works on vessels on the water, anywhere from the MIssissippi River (where I mainly work) to places out in the ocean.

A deckhands job consists of many things including maintaining the vessel inside and out, cooking, cleaning, building tow (we will cover that later on) and becoming master line handlers.

Deckhands, unlike most workers don't get paid your normal hourly wage, instead they get a daily rate and work 12 hours a day once stepping onto a vessel. An average pay as a deckhand depending on what company you plan on working for and experience level varies anywhere from a very low $100 a day pay to a whopping $280-$300 a day pay rate. As of right now I get paid $190 a day but in the past I have made $240 at a seperate company.

This daily rate is set no matter what you do during the day, busy or not you get your daily rate. Some days you may be working a full 12 hour shift with little to no breaks and other days you may be hanging out in the galley (kitchen area) watching MTV or the comedy channel with your co workers. Whatever you are doing you still get your daily pay.

A shift is normally called a "watch" on the river, and on a boat like you see in the picture above a full crew on the vessel would most of the time consist of around 6-8 people. Two wheelman who drive the vessel, four deckhands (two per watch), and sometimes a cook and engineer. The vessels I've worked on have never had cooks or engineers, that was just added to our job description as deckhands. Our 12 hour watches can work two ways, one complete 12 hour watch with 12 hours off, or a broken up 12 hour watch working 6 hours twice a day. Doing a full 12 hours and having 12 hours off is nice but most of the time, especially on a live on vessel the whole crew will work 6 hours, go down for 6 hours, and back up for 6 hours over and over until the hitch is up.

A hitch is the schedule that a deckhand works. For most live on vessels this consists of a 28/14 schedule, 14/7 schedule, 28/28 schedule, 14/14 schedule, and 7/7 schedule. Nine times out of ten a crew will be on a 28/14 schedule, 28 days living on the vessel on the river and 14 days home.

The whole hitch consits of cleaning the inside and outside of the vessel, attending safety meets with the rest of the crew, cooking, and last but not least TOW WORK.

Tow work is a deckhands main job, it's what makes or breaks most people who step into this industry.

You see the boat in the image above? That boat is wired to what are called barges. The boat uses bow (front of the vessel) winches to tightly secure itself to barges, docks, anything that is required. The boat above in the image is secured to what looks to be 35 barges in total. A group of barges like that are what we call a "tow".

To get a better idea of how large that tow is, just think of it this way, most barges are typically around 35ft wide and 200 ft long. With that being said the tow above is around 245ft wide and 1000ft long.

Our job as deckhands is to secure each and every one of those barges like the ones you see above to each other using a set of equipment called "rigging".

Rigging consists of a wire (35ft long each), a ratchet (long object with a hook and clamp on each end used to pull both sides inward), and a strap (oval with chain lengths attached). Most vessels have anywhere from 40 sets to 100 or more sets of rigging on the boat at all times. I won't get too into that at the moment but just know that rigging is what holds these barges together and sometimes even stationary rigging (attached to the barges themselves) or winches (attached to the barges themselves) as well.

As a deckhand you have to learn how to use rigging to tie down certain leads and use opposite leads on the opposite end of the barge in order to properly secure the barges together, one mistake could cause this entire block of barges in tow to fall apart while cruising down the river and that wouldn't be good for anyone.

If interested in the topic just subscribe and give me a shout to go into more detail about building tow but for now, lets finish up with the monthly pay of this line of work.

Usually we get paid every two weeks. So during my hitch of a $190 day pay rate my first check averages $2,660 before taxes and all and I get another $2,660 when getting off the boat. Thats $5,320 I come home to and have two weeks to spend before heading back out. Sure taxes will take a little out and if deckhands choose to have insurace that will take a little out as well but still overall that is a nice chunk of change.

The main reason people don't make it out on the water is because they have trouble leaving home for that long, they can't stand the heat or work of the job, or they just don't have enough work ethic to keep up.

Trust me when I say it is a great line of work and all you need to start is a valid drivers license and a "twic card" on the river. That's it. You get those two things and you can start pretty much anytime you'd like at around at least $160 a day. Companies are ALWAYS hiring and that is a fact.

I hope you guys enjoyed the post and please be sure to share and subscribe, it means a lot! Until next time (: