Abstract— The purpose of this research is to know the work pressure faced by modern Indonesian seafarers and their long distance relationship with their family. Five seafarers who originally lived in Jakarta participated in this qualitative study. Data were gathered through interviews by mobile phone. Thematic content analysis identified themes and sub-themes, among others: stress related to work, stress related to family, stress related to worship, stressor related to catastrophe, how to cope the stress, and optimal sailing interval. Some implications for theoretical and practical consideration were discussed. Index Terms— stress, stressor, coping, seafarer, Indonesia. I. INTRODUCTION adha [1] describes the seafarers and their activities as follows: “These ships differed not only in size and the number of their masts, but also in the number and shape of their sails, and their ropes-that their rigging. And it took long experience for a sailors to know all these points, the names and uses of the hundreds of different ropes, and the dozens of different sails and how furl and unfurl them, and when”. “The sailor too, had to know the sings of the weather so that the he might know when –storms were coming; and he had to study the charts and to know where it was safe to go- though this part of the work was the job of the captain and offices more than that of the common sailors. Nowadays the chief workers on a steamer are the engineers; the `sailors; have no rigging or sails to attend to, and so are not sailors in the old sense, though there are still ships in use”. “A sailor’s life is a hard rough one; and it is dangerous. We landsmen have little idea what it must be to climb the tall masts in a storm to furl the sails, when the ship is rolling and pitching like a mad thing, the wind is icy cold, the rain is pouring down, and it is pitch dark. And sailors are always in Hendro Prabowo is with the Faculty of Psychology, Gunadarma University, Depok, West Java, Indonesia (e-mail: ndrahu@yahoo.com). Firda F. Fatimah is with Faculty of Psychology, Gunadarma University, Depok, West Java, Indonesia Alia R. Fauziah is with Faculty of Psychology, Gunadarma University, Depok, West Java, Indonesia Ira N Prabawati is with Faculty of Psychology, Gunadarma University, Depok, West Java, Indonesia Maria Chrisnatalia is with Faculty of Psychology, Gunadarma University, Depok, West Java, Indonesia danger of shipwreck or sinking in a storm, of fire, or of dying of thirst in calm”. Actually, the description by Radha above is not much different from what [2] described about seafarer two centuries ago, especially in the face of danger, storms, weather, and death. On the other hand, according to Thomas [14] the dependence on intimate partnerships and immediate family as a support system may be particularly important for seafarers who are an extremely socially isolated group. Therefore, in the digital age there are a lot of information on the internet about long distance relationship between seafarer and his family. A life is different from common family because seafarers live separated for long periods with their family. Indonesia is most archipelago country in the world, where 75% of the territory is the sea, it is very necessary to have many seafarers, both traditional and modern. In 2016 the Indonesian government tried to make Indonesia a strong Maritime Country and as a World Maritime Axis. This proved to be quite successful, while the Indonesian merchant fleet grew significantly by 132.8% or about 15 thousand units in the last 10 years (2005 - 2015) [4]. The purpose of this research is to know the work pressure faced by modern Indonesian seafarer and long distance relationship with their family. II. METHODS Five seafarers who originally lived in Jakarta participated in this qualitative study. Data were gathered through long distance chat interviews by gadget or mobile phone. These five participants described demographically in Table 1. TABLE 1. DEMOGRAPHIC OF PARTICIPANTS Initial Name and Age Status Sailing Experien ce Main Job Sailing Route Type of Ship A (27) Single 1 year Chef International Cruise B (34) Single 16 year Crew International LNG NGM (28) Engagement 3 years Chef International Cruise GSK (26) Single 5 year Depart ment of Deck International Container L (20) Dating 1,5 year Apprent ice Domestic Cargo A qualitative approach was adopted to capture a deep understanding of the meaning of experiences through Seafarer’s Stress and Long Distance Relationship with Family Hendro Prabowo, Firda F. Fatimah, Alia R. Fauziah, Ira N. Prabawati, and Maria Chrisnatalia R 11th Asia Pacific Transportation and the Environment Conference (APTE 2018) Copyright © 2019, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Advances in Engineering Research, volume 186 174