I don't have facebook I refuse. But anyways do you have to know a guy to do this or can a normal person do this? If I wasn't tethered to my doctors office once a month to stay alive I would be on the phone setting this up right now. I don't have a job! why not! Do shit now while you can, you won't be able to at some point and that point may come early in life.
yeah - refusing FB worked fine for me for some years ;-)
anyway - you dont have to know someone who knows someone - you just have to find an agency specialized on this... I did a brief search and found this in the U.S -->
https://www.freightercruises.com/voyages.php - as for the question, if a normal person can do this - yes, sure, why not? as you are one of the rare females here, you might wanna keep in mind, that on a container vessel you usually wont find females - neither officers nor crew. female officers are simply rare to find on ships, there are some on maersk vessels, but they still are the minority. which doesn't mean, that there are no female pessengers traveling on their own. if you can cope with only men around you, that's fine. usually those are very friendly and wont molest you :-) the only limits are age and general health. here in germany you have to present a medical approval when being over 60 years old. generally, if you are handicapped in any form, you better stay off those vessels. only bigger vessels are equipped with eleveators, stairways usually are narrow and steep, and the entire environment is a heavy duty working environment with the expactable risks of injuries and accidents - be sure to ruin your clothing and catch some bruises especially in heavy weather. oh - yes - if you know, you get seasick, better leave it - no stabilizers available :-) otherwise you might also enjoy experiences like that here i filmed on one of my trips to the canaries
https://youtu.be/PLbzDU7R-JE :-)
as for the clothing - this turned out to be cruicial - i always take one pair of clothing with me, that can be thrown away afterwards. there are all kinds of grease, smeer, oils and dirt on deck - you will never be able to get rid of any stains caused by that stuff again :-) generally i take sloppy slutty stuff for board life and one set of civilized clothing for going ashore. you will find out, that officers on cargo vessels barely wear shiny polished uniforms but instead sneakers, jogging pants and comfortable t shirts or jumpers... these ppl are just oboard for working, sometimes dont get sleep for more than 24 hours, etc. being well dressed aint the priority at all :-) and you dont need to take too much stuff with you, as all vessels have a laundry room that you can use depending on the laundry machine's schedule. bring some washing powder :-)
As life aboard is not like on a cruise ship, you might wanna read this here to get an idea, what you can expect, and what you are expected to behave -->
http://www.transitionsabroad.com/listings/travel/articles/travel-by-cargo-ship-around-the-world.shtmlyou might wanna search the internet to find a travelling agency suiting your needs - just look for cargo ship travel or something... the ship companies themselves rarely deal with passengers directly, as they are logistics companies and dont have the time and ressources to handle the passenger related stuff - thats why they source that out to specialized agencies. the only company directly handling passengers i know off is hamburg süd - but as the name implies, they are based in hamburg / germany and i dont know whether they also deal with passengers from other countries... have a look -->
http://www.hamburgsued-frachtschiffreisen.de/en/freightertravel/index.jspand as you refusing FB - i have some of the other container vessel trips here on my blog pages - gives you an idea, how life aboard looks like and what you can experience when going ashore...
going from northern europe down to the canaries and northern africa:
http://blogs.herrrausb.de/fotoblog/?page_id=5850xmas and new year between hamburg and the baltic sea on my favourite ship:
http://blogs.herrrausb.de/fotoblog/?page_id=4152going into the ice / frozen baltic sea:
http://blogs.herrrausb.de/fotoblog/?page_id=1481going from new zealand through panama channel to philly on a larger vessel:
http://blogs.herrrausb.de/worldtrip2012/?page_id=1050if you have more questions for hints feel free to contact me via PN - unless this is interesting to more ppl and wouldn't be regarded being too much off topic eletronics-wise ;-)
regards
axel