-We want to try to have a direct dialogue with the seafarers, before their ships dock at Aalborg or Nørresundby. When we know about their wants and needs, we can focus our efforts before we come aboard. Doing it this way we can use our strength better than before, where seafaring-service visits were unsolicited and we often first knew about the seafarers needs once they were in port.

That is how Jens Aa. V. Schulz from Aalborg-Nørresundby Seafaring-services explains one of the significant reasons as to why the 60 year-old mobile welfare service has established its own website (www.seaman-aalborg.dk). Through the website ships calling at the port of Aalborg can – in good time – submit their wishes about e.g. newspapers in their home country’s language, books, SIM-cards, mobile internet connection, bus tickets, sport events and excursions. The website also has an introduction to Aalborg.

The ships can naturally also send an e-mail, a text message or make a phone call to forward their wishes, but the contact through the website is a future-proof way of communicating, and the seafarers may also find inspiration by reading the website.

- No job is too small and only a few are too big, and of course it is easier to fulfil wishes when we know them in advance, says Jens Aa. V. Schulz, who has been a seafaring-service man in Aalborg and Nørresundby for 25 years. My hope is that the seafarers or the ship management to a greater extent will take responsibility for the seafarer’s leisure time and welfare. Just as it is natural to requisition supplies or repairs before calling at port, it should be natural to think about the leisure time onboard, which is important for the mental health of the seafarers.

The preceding contact between ship and seafaring-service should also be seen in a security perspective.

- I could imagine that security-rules after ISPS in a few years will be just as strict in the Port of Aalborg as they are in Rotterdam, where I a short while ago visited one of my colleagues. The welfare consultant there can not come aboard without a preceding appointment. The establishment of our website with a direct answering option is in that perspective also an initiative that takes increased security rules into account in the future.