13/051 Third Officer on small container vessel

A third officer on a small container ship gives his view

I dont want to criticize working onboard condition but i just want to share my point of view and want to improve the sealife onboard and more favourable for the seafarer.
As far as my company is concerned, the one is having lot of container vessels and hence these vessels use to do frequent ports maintaining a very tight schedule.
Some points regarding fatigue at sea I want to point out:

1. Ratings contract is of 9 months at present. I really think its too much for them.
2. At operational level officers contract is of 6 +/- 1 months and we often used to get home after 6 and a half months.
3. At ports while in cargo watch operational level officers use to do 6 hrs on/6 hrs off watch system.

There is a serious concern regarding this port watch system due to no. of reasons:

1. After proper handing over the watch, writing deck log, freshening up, having some meal the one go to sleep and then for waking up 20 mins early for taking over watch. In this system the port watchkeeper gets approx 4.5 hours to sleep at one time. Never more than this.
2. As container vessel doing many ports, therefore while arrival and departure all officers are required to attend the stations and hence vessels arrives and then watch starts soon.

For example one of my vessel use to do 12 port in 22 days of Türkiye, Italy and Greece. One can very well think of no. of stations and work load on the seafarer.

I think there should be 3 operational level officers in special routes which are hectic.
And we should have no more than 10 working hours in a day.
I am not against doing work but I am replying so that good standards can be set up for the industry.