Able Bodied

Everything in this sport is Big, Heavy, Cold, Wet and Rusty. You'll get used to it. The A/B's you see here are Malaysians. A/B stands for Able Bodied Seaman by the way. A Dutch ship should have a Dutch crew on board you think, but this is long time history. If you want to compete with foreign flagged vessels and worse; even with convenience flagged vessels, you have to cut your expenses drastically. This was already done more than one hundred years ago with the Lascar seamen, so that is nothing new. Since twenty years we have Malaysian A/B's, Riggers, Welders, Oilers, Cooks and so on. They are much smaller than European A/B's and maybe not so strong, but masters in smart solutions. Never saw a Malaysian A/B with a hernia. Even if working with shackles and connections like you see here is backbreaking. You want to see the result of this job? See this picture