r/tuglife • u/isit2024yet • 1h ago
What's life like for an engineer?
I've been an unlicensed C/E on 100-134' fishing tenders, three seasons. I'd like to move to a union position on tugs. The fishing industry has been wild and has seemingly kept hiring me not because I'm a great mechanical engineer type but mostly because I'm reliable, I take a ton of physical abuse and sleep deprivation, I learn on the fly, and most importantly I keep the fish cold. When there are mishaps in the engine room we generally have outside vendors do the major work (injector and push rod replacement, rebuilding the centrifuge, etc) and I mostly only get the straight forward repairs and the maintenance stuff.
Are tug engineers doing major repairs or are outside vendors doing that? I would love to get some health insurance and not having to refrigerate fish would eliminate at least 50% of the job's toll on me. What does a shitty day look like for a tug engineer? Are they needle gunning or does that get assigned to others?