312 Ship 14 28.5.2019 goodbye Australia

Whenever or wherever I mark the point of leaving Australia, now it is definitely done, only when I try to be a bit sophisticated, I could say that only by passing Christmas Island tomorrow night, Australia completely lies behind me.
At noon, I went up to the bridge. First, I saw the quiet ocean and that our speed was more than 20kn and thought w can go faster because it is quiet. But the officer explained the reason: now we try to go as fast as possible, because even now the water temperature is 24° and it will go up to 31° around the equator which makes it harder to cool the engine, so we cannot go full speed later.
He also told me about the problems you meet when you want to get to the next level in ship’s hierarchy. You must pass a test for becoming 3^rd and another one for becoming chief officer. But for that, you need to study one year at home, with high additional costs and without an income. But if you wait too long, the company will prefer younger graduates. I so far had heard that the crew normally is on board for 4 months and off for 2. But he told me that it depends: engineers and officers from Europe have this schedule, but for him it is 6 months and for the crew it is even 9 months (and 3 off). For the moment I didn’t want to ask more, but some question rise, when you hear that…