C'mon, someone must know something about them! Throw a dog a bone here!

A good career for some. I have 8 years in the RN and the RN and RFA work habd in hand. In that time I was sent on an RFA ship to learn astronavigation while my frigate was in drydock. On the whole the RFA Officer has a better standard of living than the RN. They have on suit cabins, stewards who tidy the cabin, change sheets and generally make life relaxing. All things that were very new to me. Discipline is very relaxed compared to the RN. The sailors often think that RFA Officers are failed RN candidates. This is very very wrong. The RFA are better ocean navigators using traditional methods. Close in they use GPS and like other navies of the world except the RN, Ozzies, Canadians and Kiwis struggle with 3 minute visual fixing, the bread and butter of visual pilotage. But best of all about the RFA is that they don't pay tax if they are out of the country for 6 months of the year and they get more leave than anyone in the military. 3 months on 3 months off.

You might have a wait for MARS to provide you with a plush new berth, but it still seems the life to live. If I wasn't such a landlocked soul I'd give it a go myself.

Thanks for the advice angryjohn. I have already sent off my application, and am stuck in limbo hoping for the best, I have not heard back from them yet. I am a tad concerned that my application wont be as competitive as some, as although I have A levels, while all they require are good GCSE's, I have a year and a bit post 6th form college of "Gap year", with nothing CV worthy going apart from the TA.

My experience with RFA types, was not all good, but not all bad either. On the whole, if you are looking to make sea a career, than the RFA officers made a better go of it in civilian companies than did the ex-RN. More traditional training and quite simply better navigators all round and much more practical. The cream of the ex-RFA crop could be found in Dubai as tanker pilots. Very, very sweet job. So, in my honest opinion, RFA might be the best platform on which to build a maritime career inside the UK. I don't think the standard of training was any higher than the UK merchant Navy, but when it came to assessing unusual situations some (not all) ex-RFA types were the person you wanted on deck. In fact, one ex-RFA guy I came across, is the only person I have encountered that you would have described as "James Bond". extremely cool under pressure, nothing affectatious and just delivered the goods all the time. But, sad to say he was one of few. No, I tell a lie, there was one other guy who was like that. We were in a tiny boat (ok ship) in a force 11 gale and he said "sh@t" which sent a panic through the whole ship as he never said "sh@t", but considering I was struggling to open the bridge door against the inrush of green water (we were swathed in chlorine gas from the broken aldis light battery bank, so we needed air), I think he was justified. ahh good times, good times ;)

The good thing about the RFA over the RN is that the RFA get all the MCA qualifications that the RN can't award. Very very handy when you want to go outside. I took mine once I left and had to fund them myself. The bad things about the RFA is the stick the officers get from many of their sailors and other shipping companies (all in ignorance), the unions protecting arse pissed up sailors who should be sacked, the engineers thinking they should be in command (two captains on one ship and the Chief Engineer being above the XO I really disagree with)and the fact they have to do the sh** things the RN officers do without the quedos of being the most special of people in the world, an RN Seaman Officer!!!! ;-)

Heh, the thought of the sailors having trade unions never crossed my mind. Does that mean you can't flog them? Or do you flog the union rep instead?

You just have to learn to get along with unions yimmy http://www.strategypage.com/messageboards/messages/512-24493.asp Most officers don't get it. But if you win their trust through team building there is no one I would rather have sail with me. Its just how do you do that? It really is extremely difficult and often its unique for each ship. You can't rely on the "3 types of character" crap that stormy normy espouses in his auto biography "doesn't take a hero". That sort of junk will get you in hot water before you can say rumplestiltskin. Anyway, It is difficult and probably the greatest challenge that you will face. What I learned is that no situation repeats itself twice. So whenever you are confronted with a problem you can assess it with an open mind. So; 1) treat each sailor as different. Find something in common with the person. 2) Do that and don't become a schizophrenic 3) Just because a guy acts one way in a crisis does not mean he will act that way again. 4) Always, always review your decision in your minds eye, over and over again. Working with unions is like playing chess. Just becasue you make a command decision doesn't mean you don't know there are 20 other ways to tackle the problem. you make your decision and then you monitor it like a hawk and compare it with the other ways of going about it. As soon as you see it not working you switch and that is how things done at sea with people who are not military. Another analogy; Its kind of like rock climbing, going across when you need to... rather than going up, but all the while you are building towards your successful summiting of the rockface. There's some insight for you... anyway, it got that way I could just glance at something, I don't know.. say a life boat that needed maintenance. I would go to the mess, eat, come back out to get on the job and voila, it was done before I got their. I would go find the Bosun and before I could say anything, he would say "I saw you frown at it"... cheers W

Thanks for the insight! I won't know if my application has got through the sift board (there is no reason why it shouldn't however) until late February. My CV isn't perfect, but I have good grades and my Lieutenant is giving me a glowing reference.

"... I won't know if my application has got through the sift board (there is no reason why it shouldn't however) until late February. My CV isn't perfect, but I have good grades and my Lieutenant is giving me a glowing reference. ..." Don't worry about the CV... Just tell them you will do the job and if they pay you, you'll try t do it better than anyone else.