Ease The MainWith Benevento and its crew

The one question we are most frequently queried by friends and family is: What do you do at night when you are in the middle of the sea?  You can’t anchor (or “park” as some friends have asked).

You can kind of anchor, it’s called heaving-to or you can lie-a-hull.   Basically you stop sailing and just drift while you get some shut eye.  But if you are trying to cover some ground you need to sail around the clock which means someone is on night watch.

Other than heavy weather sailing, I find maintaining a night watch, with a short-hand crew, to be the most challenging task while at sea.  Sailing short-handed is just that – a shortage of hands to help sail.  We are a crew of three, but our 10-year-old son, Dante, is too young to be on night watch.  So that leaves Jen and me to heavy-eye-it through the night.

If you have a large crew (think of the days of old square rig sailing ships) it’s no problem.  You divide the crew into sub crews with each sub-crew taking some number of shifts per day.  For example, suppose you had a crew large enough to divide into three sub crews – a first mate would be responsible for the first crew, the second mate responsible for the second crew and so on.   Assume each crew takes a 4-hour watch duty.  The daily schedule would work out like this: on watch four hours; off watch eight hours.  So each crew would have two watch shifts per day.

But as mentioned we are effectively a crew of two.   Over the years Jen and I have experimented with different watch schedules.  Two hours on, two hours off – too short can’t get enough sleep.  Four on, four off – too long, hard to stay awake at the helm.  Three on, three off seems to be the easiest for us.

Truth be told, it is very hard not to doze off at the helm regardless of the schedule you try to maintain.  You’re not actually steering the boat, which makes it even harder to stay awake.  In our case we have an autopilot, others use a wind vane.  Either case you aren’t doing any physical work, just watching for other ships and any hazards, like hitting land.  Combine that with the gently rolling of the sea and you have a perfect lullaby in the making.  Press any sailor on this point, and if they are above board, they will admit they have fallen asleep at the helm.

So given this reality here is what we do to maintain a margin of safety:  If we are near shore, 10 to 30 nm we set our radar alarm and AIS alarm to warn of any nearby ships, and set a kitchen timer for 20 minutes.  So if we do doze off we are woken with plenty of time to deal with any hazards.  Keep in mind – we are only traveling 5 to 6 knots.  Now when we are further off shore, 30+ nm, we set the timer for one hour.  Our radar can pick up targets within a 48 nm range and our AIS has a range of 80 to 150 nm.  Cargo ships cruise at around 12 to 22 kts.  So assume a cargo ship heading directly towards us at 22 kts, and we’re going 7 kts (I wish) – our combined speed is 29 kts.  At a minimum distance of 48 nm between us, time to impact is approximately two hours and ten minutes.  So even with the timer set to one hour, if a hazard should suddenly appear just after I fell asleep (for one hour) I would have one hour and ten minutes to deal with the situation upon being woken by our timer.  Every hour we get up and check the radar and AIS for targets and check the boat for any thing that might be amiss, which takes about 10 minutes.  Then back to sleep.  Now  I’m not suggesting others do this, but this approach has worked for us.  And we’re surprisingly well rested which enables us to be better sailors during the day and not zombies.  

It should be notes: if we see a target on screen, regardless of how far away, we won’t go a sleep.  And if it looks like the target will pass close by we hail them over the radio to confirm they see us and what their intentions are for passing us.  Often we’ll get an updated weather forecast from them to boot.

It a glorious sight … seeing the sun rise, knowing you have made it through another long night!

Time to hit the hay.

“Good morning Dad!  I slept great last night.  Are you ready to play?”  Oh boy……

 Sunrise over the Gulf of Tehuantepec

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