And the day watch and passaging in
general
16 FEB 2015
We just did our run from the Dry
Tortugas to Isla Mujeres in 54 hours, which means that we took
watches, 4 on 4 off. This is a typical cruising couple watch
schedule so there’s no real news here, but the experience is
amplified on long passages. A quick overnight you can tough it out
with loose watch discipline, but on long passages sticking to the
schedule is important. And so there were lots of night and day
watches to stand.
Which means when you are On, the boat
is yours, day or night. On watch, we are both dealing with active
route navigation, sail handling, and monitoring for ships-in-our-path
and weather issues. Everything but sail handling is hugely
simplified with our electronics, such as radar, AIS, and the chart
plotter, especially at night when visual conning is limited to
spotting the lights of ships or beacons. On Cerca Trova, all
operation functions are available at the nav station in our main
cabin, so on this last passage (in a cold snap in February) we ran
the boat from inside. As for sail handling, we tend to shorten sail
and then let it ride on the night watch because you can’t see the
sails well and sail work beyond trimming of sheets often requires
both of us, ie you have to wake up the off-watch person. Monitoring
for collision risk and progress along the planned route doesn’t
take much time, so we try to fill in with other things.
On the night watch I like to fill time
with communications work. Partly because shortwave radio works a
lot better at night, partly because it makes me feel connected
despite being on a small boat on a large, dark ocean, and partly
because it keeps me from fretting about all those boat systems that
are failing but I just haven’t found yet. So when you get emails
from us at 3am it’s because that’s when I got the radio-email to
connect. And contacting the radio officers on the big ships crossing
our route ensures that they actually know you are there. Jennifer
actually had one ship kindly change course in such a way that they
had to later yield to another on-coming ship such that they lost
noticeable progress.
And when you are Off, you had best get
some sleep.
But Jennifer and I have each our own
extra functions aboard that we need to address when on passage, above
and beyond running the boat, and we generally try to take care of
those functions on the off watch and when there are no other
boat-demands when On. Jenn handles provisions, food in general, and
long range planning. I handle boat systems and navigational
planning. Food on passage is pivotally important because a) there’s
no food out there that you didn’t bring with you and b) well fed
people do a lot better under stress, and passaging is clearly
stressful on many levels. And preparing food while under way is
uniquely difficult, which requires planning ahead for minimal
cooking. Boat systems on passage are also critical. By that I mean
battery, fuel and fresh water status, engines, pumps, weather,
navionics and communication gear. The thing about boat systems on
passage is that something always goes wacky, so vigilance is required
to catch/fix/adapt the out-of-whack gear before real problems
develop.
I am not sure when we will do our next
passaging. Passaging is a rare thing for many cruisers because it’s
generally difficult sailing due to the uncertainty of weather and
routing barriers like the Gulf Stream or prevailing winds. If those
barriers weren’t there then people would be going all over, all the
time. “Gee Honey, let’s sail down to Columbia and check out
Cartagena”, not.
But when we do, we will back on the
night watches.
