About this desk
Who writes The Crewing Desk, how a sheet is put together, what this desk refuses to do, and what it owes to the name it was bought under.
Service page · Edition of
The Crewing Desk is an independent editorial reference on the work of merchant crews, written for the people who do that work and for the shore staff who arrange it. It answers one question per sheet: what a certificate actually authorises, how many hours of rest a two-watch rotation leaves, who decides when a ship sails, what a medical examination looks for, how a relief travel is put together.
The desk is not an agency. No page on this site is for sale, and no company pays for the way it is described.
How a sheet is written
Every sheet starts from a question a seafarer, a candidate or a shore office really asks. The answer comes first, before any background. What follows is organised so a reader can jump to the part they need, and the sources are named at the end: an administration of the flag state, a convention, a classification society, a training programme, a published notice.
Where the sources do not settle a question, the sheet says so. Where a rule differs between flags, the sheet names the difference instead of picking one. Numbers carry their unit and their source.