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July 13, 2005 - STANDING WATCH
by Al & Beth Liggett

We have just completed a 15-day passage from Chagos to Langkawi, Malaysia. It was a pretty good trip all told. First few days were a mixed bag of weather but mostly reasonable sailing. Two strong squalls (to 48 knots). The third night seemed to be the end of that kind of weather and we broke through at dawn to tradewind conditions. Never saw another rain drop; sailed wing and wing with W or SW winds all the rest of the way. Overall we sailed 1935 miles in 1 hour less than 15 days. The first five days we gained mileage (40) with some favorable current, then gradually lost it all, ending up with a 30-mile deficit at landfall. We used the engine 55 hours, primarily for the last 24 hours as, typically along this coast, there was just no wind at all.

All those statistics hardly tell the story, though. Life on passage is more than just up-the-sails, down-the-sails, and plots of our position. There are things to do - mostly cooking, eating and sleeping - and things to see, like porpoise, flying fish, rainbows and the full moon rising. And then there is standing watch. We are just 2 aboard, and we are often asked about our watch schedules on passage.

I think there are probably as many different kinds of watch systems as there are boats out sailing. What works for you is what you should do. When we first started long-distance sailing, back in the 60s, we didn't keep watches at night at all. We just both lay down and went to sleep. But we didn't really sleep deeply; when you woke up, you got up and had a look around. I can't believe we really did that!

Our regular watch pattern for the night is 2 hours on, 2 hours off. We start the first watch at 7 pm, or maybe 7:30, depending on dinner and cleanup after. It's amazing how tuned in to this 2-and-2 pattern you become. I often wake or roll over and wonder what time it is just moments before Al calls me for my turn.

During the day we don't keep a constant schedule. Whoever is awake is on watch. We each take a good nap though, sleeping as long as we want, which typically works out to be 2 hours. If we've had a bad night and we've both been up more than usual, we both try to get 2 naps during the day.

What do we do on watch? Well, we watch. In good weather we settle down in the cockpit. In poor conditions we might sit under the dodger on the hatch sill, or even down below at the chart table. I tend to move back and forth between those options. We check the sails and horizon, see what is going on with the GPS readings, the compass, auto pilot, speed and all. We write our position and sailing information in the log every 6 hours and plot the position on the chart.

Occasionally we put on the earphones and listen to the radio. But VOA and BBC get a bit repetitious after awhile, and there never seems to be good music anywhere on the bands. Maybe that's a good thing - it might put you to sleep. We try not to let our morning ham radio schedules interfere with the person still asleep. So that might call for a bit of juggling with the watch hours during the night. Or just monitoring the radio with ear phone jack and not checking in. Daytime we can do anything that doesn't interfere with the other person's sleep. Usually, we read.

Years ago Al modified one of our overhead cabin lights by adding a red LED inside the lens. There is also a similar LED in the light in the head. This keeps our night vision, while giving enough subdued light to move around the cabin, galley, and head. I keep the cookie container on the counter in the galley as well as a small box of hard candies for night watch snacks. Al knows where the peanut butter lives, but I have to remember to have the crackers handy!

This passage we had a wonderful full moon to keep us company on watch. With clear skies there were stars aplenty too. I found it hard to try to remember all our former navigational stars and find them. Old friends Venus, Jupiter, Saturn and Mars - 4 out of the 5 visible planets - were up there in our skies this time of year. We saw satellites streaming by a few nights too. And as we closed the coast, the occasional airplane tracked across the sky. So you see we had things to look at, even if there was nothing to watch for.

One significant facet of this passage is crossing the shipping lane. Every ship that comes from Europe, the Med, or the Middle East to Asian ports (and visa versa) probably comes down the Red Sea, across the Indian Ocean to the tip of Sri Lanka and eastward from there to the Great Nicobar Channel at the top end of Sumatra. This is at 6 degrees North latitude. Our rhumb line track from Chagos also headed for the same channel. Definitely watch keeping time, and there were LOTS of ships to see.

We tend not to use the radar much. We did have it on during our traverse of the shipping lanes. We find that very often we can spot a ship long before our radar "finds" it. We see something, and THEN we turn on the radar! Fishing boats, even the big ones in this area, are wood. They do not show up on radar unless they are less than a half mile away. We turned the VHF radio on several times. We tried to contact some of the ships regarding our position and their relative course and speed to us. Not one of them responded. We have no idea if they were aware of us or not.

We had some memorable moments on this passage, like crossing the Equator and giving the obligatory drop of rum to King Neptune. Three days in a row we had a marvelous porpoise show in the late afternoon. A crazy gannet bird kept trying to land - on the mast, on the spreaders, on the sail, on the solar panel, on the wind vane! He was around long enough that we named him Jose - like, "No Way, Jose!" Then there was fish day. We were just settling down in the cockpit to have our supper in the softening tones of the sunset. Al said, "Oh, I forgot to take in the fishing line." He took another mouthful of spaghetti, and you can probably guess what happened. Bingo! Hook up! He grabbed the gloves and pulled in a massive bull mahi mahi! Twenty pounds! Terrific, but it also meant cleaning it on deck in the dark - not fun. Back to our cold spaghetti and slightly altered watch hours.

It takes a few days to get into the rhythm of watch keeping at night. It's the second night that is the hardest for us, and our third night on this passage was beset with strong squalls that interrupted sleep. Then the days just seem to flow on by. Pretty soon we were at the halfway point in mileage. Then it was the approach to our Great Nicobar Channel waypoint. And when I woke up for my last watch, there were the mountains of Langkawi silhouetted in the dawn light. Landfall is definitely the best part of standing watch.