A Night in the Life

More wind today! Almost 15 knots of it. Making our way to Mindelo by sail power which is refreshing. A little over 100 nm to go. But for today I thought I would tell you all about night watches.

My watch starts at 0300 so I set an alarm for 0245 to give myself time to get dressed, use the head, and catch up with Jan on anything eventful from his watch before I relieve him. Common questions: “See any boats?” “How’s our speed?” “Any shooting stars?”

As Jan heads off to sleep, I’m left alone on deck and suddenly this boat is my responsibility. If something goes wrong, I need to be able to take the next right step to address it. That starts with remaining on the boat to do so, so I throw on my life jacket/harness combo. It’s an offshore life jacket that automatically inflates when dunked in water so it’s not nearly as bulky as the big foam orange ones with black straps they make you wear when you rent a canoe or whatever. It also has two very heavy duty carabiners that allow me to clip in as I’m moving around the boat; essential if I’m going to the foredeck. Taught jack lines (safety lines) span the length of the ship so I always have something to clip into.

The last few nights, with incredibly calm seas, it’s been reasonable to make our way up to the foredeck on night watch and lay there for a time to look at the stars. Otherwise, though, it’s generally something to be avoided. Impaired visibility and the jostling of the boat on the waves makes it an unnecessary risk when you’re alone on deck at night.

I set a timer on my watch for 20 minutes. If the seas are rough or if I’ve spotted a boat nearby, I might set it for 10. If the wind is particularly close to sustaining a speed where we would reef, I might watch the anemometer closely. In the next 20 minutes I’m generally free to do as I please. I can read, listen to an audiobook, listen to music, play a game on my phone, close my eyes, watch the stars… I know Jan will sometimes watch a movie he has downloaded. Sounds like tonight was the live action Alice and Wonderland.

Maybe I make some tea and grab a snack. Tonight’s snack: Crunchy Picante. Essentially Hot  Cheetos but flavored more like the spicy purple Doritos? Not bad actually.

When my timer goes off, I pause what I’m doing and get up to look around. You may wonder “Wait, who is sailing the boat this whole time?” Good question! The answer is our trusty friend Mr. Autopilot. An autopilot is pretty essential for a journey like this. I mean, you CAN technically make the journey without it. But with a small crew the autopilot turns the journey from possible to enjoyable.

A couple years ago, Connor and I went on a sailing trip with Jan and a friend Joel down the coast of California from San Francisco to Santa Barbara. Early on the first day, the autopilot quit so it was hand steering from then on out. It was a three day, two night trip, and let me tell you, it was brutal. Now, it’s definitely possible to balance a sailboat so it basically sails itself by tightening the mainsail and the headsail just so. But with big waves, a sailboat will get jostled, thrown off its perfect little course, and really struggle to maintain a heading without someone directing the rudder. All this to say, we had to have someone steering 24/7 and it’s exhausting. Your arms get tired, your brain gets tired. You spend the journey trying to find time to sleep more than relishing the moment. It was an amazing trip nonetheless, but it was only a few days. I decided something: I would never attempt an ocean crossing without an autopilot.

So when my 20 minute timer goes off I’m checking the status of a few different things. This particular autopilot has a couple options: it can either steer the boat so it maintains a particular angle to the wind, it can steer the boat so it maintains a particular heading, or it can steer the boat so it follows a predefined route. Tonight, it’s maintaining an angle to the wind so I need to make sure the wind hasn’t shifted so much that we need to change our sail trim and adjust the autopilot to stay on course.

Otherwise, I’m checking our boat speed: are we moving fast enough that I can turn on our electric motor regeneration and charge our batteries? (This is actually a new one to me, I’ve never been on a boat where you had to check for that before.) I’m checking the wind speed, is it fast enough that we need to be thinking about reefing (reducing how much sail we have out) soon? I check our digital navigation system to see if the AIS has picked up on any nearby boats, overlaying them on our digital chart plotter and giving me information like their name, their current speed, their heading, and their size. I ask myself, based on our heading, do I need to worry about a possible collision course? But AIS doesn’t always pick them all up so I also scan the horizon: checking for what look like stars right on the edge of the water’s distant line. If you can see a boat on the AIS, a game begins trying to pick out their navigation lights on the horizon.

When I finish my check, I go back to whatever I chose to do to pass the 4 hours until the next watcher wakes up and relieves me so I can get a little more shut eye before greeting the day.

I love the timing of my watch in particular for a few reasons, but mainly because I get to see the sun rise. Otherwise, I spend the whole watch with the stars. So far, the moon has mainly been full or nearly full. Even though I know there are countless stars up there, the bright silvery disc of the moon only lets the brightest of the stars shine. Orion and the Big Dipper have been making an appearance, slowly but noticeably shifting to the western part of the sky in the week since I’ve been watching them. The moon, I know, will eventually diminish to a sliver and the sky will be full of stars stretching from horizon to horizon.

A meteor shower was predicted a couple nights ago but again, with the full moon, it was almost impossible to see. Almost. Around 0600 a bright white light streaked across the sky. It was instantaneous but left a dark shadow in my vision. It was as bright as the moon and clearly burning - on fire. It was as if someone had set off a bright white flare. I’ve never seen anything like it before. I can’t imagine what it would be like to have the whole sky full of them. Beautiful. Frightening. Awesome.

The mast is creaking overhead, the following waves lap at the stern of the boat, sometimes overtaking the bottom-most step of each hull. The wind (yes we finally have wind) brushes against my face and jostles the sleeves of my sweater, coming from our port side rear quarter because we’re on a deep reach. Eventually, the eastern bit of sky fades to a dusty orange and I know the sun is close, just brushing the underside of the horizon. It’s peaceful to be out here, the only person awake to see this bit of sky for many many miles on the open ocean.