Do you keep a Constant Lookout?

[svmariane]

Crew deciding who's turn on watch....

[rockDAWG]

Well.... nice to have other crew on board, but it is not always possible. If I am soloing, I will go to sleep for 30 min block ( I need my rem sleep). I will have my AIS and Radar alarms on, I will sleep when I am not in coast water and off the shipping lane.

[Reiziger]

Originally Posted by gjordan

No single handers seem to be answering. How odd! I must admit that on my first Pacific Crossing, after about 3 days of seeing nothing I started to sleep for an hour or two at a time. That was with 2 of us. I should say that the first evening out of Socorro Island we saw a freighter on the horizon. It wasnt until 30 years later that I saw a chart that showed the great circle route from Panama to Hawaii to go just below Socorro. Never saw another boat for the next 22 days. Never saw another boat between the Tuamotus and Hawaii (24 days). A couple of years later, I went from New England to Bermuda, and was horrified by the volume of traffic. I never sailed without a watch in the Atlantic or Carribean again. Way too much traffic. In the early days I always had a windvane. I cant imagine the fatigue factor sailing watch and watch with just 2 people and no self steering. Pay your dime and take your chances. ____Grant.

To be honnest, depence where I am. Happens that I sleep 3-4 hours.

[brantleychuck]

Depends where I happen to be. If I have a mate aboard then we keep watch 24/7. When solo before I got a AIS receiver I slept to a 20 min minute timer. I
You can get used to it and come morning really feel like u got some good rest. When it's black out and I can't see 10 feet with no mate I have slept through the night in areas with no traffic for days, no lecture please.


Sent from my iPad using Cruisers Sailing Forum

[irwin37]

Originally Posted by Randyonr3

Container ships are known to travel at 30 knots or better.. So that 1/2 mile every minute... over a period of 15 minutes,

Thats one fast container ship, the fastest I have ever seen was in the 12 - 16 kts. I have been on a cruse ship that was pushing 20 kts.

[StuM]

Originally Posted by irwin37

Thats one fast container ship, the fastest I have ever seen was in the 12 - 16 kts. I have been on a cruse ship that was pushing 20 kts.

They used to run around 20-25, but over the last few years a lot of them have gone over to "slow steaming" at 12 - 16 for economy (and if you believe the corporate spin, to cut down on emissions)

[Neptune's Gear]

Nope. When solo sailing I often have a digital radar and AIS on watch, but when doing this I'm away from shipping lanes. Try to stay awake when near a coast or shipping lanes. My alarms would wake the dead. No chance of sleeping through them. when I have crew, someone always on watch. it is interesting to see how many times the electronics detect a threat before the watch-keeper!

[boatman61]

Originally Posted by gjordan
No single handers seem to be answering. How odd!


That's because we know the 98% of members who are armchair Admirals and captains.. and the Harbour hoppers who only sail in daylight will beat up on us...

[JPA Cate]

Boatie,

We won't beat up on you, but we who do 6 on 6 off, we will be watching for you --- and *whatever*!

Ann

[boatman61]

Single handed its 16hrs on.. 8hrs sack time.. sailing on AP or hove to depending on my location.. with occasional 'P' watch..
With current set up (me + 1) it'll be 20hrs - 4hrs... with the odd catnap during the day..

[MarkJ]

Originally Posted by robert sailor

cutting your scan into 15 degree pieces of pie so to speak and getting a good look when you rise to the top of the swell and then move to the next 15 degrees etc. until you have done a real good 360 degree look.

A good piece of advice in a thread so hackneyed that a Google search would slow the whole worlds internet to a crawl as you dredge through the previous threads.
(Of course I never have a constant watch. Even in shipping chanels in a harbour as my plotter is downstairs and I do actually use it and all my electronics, so I bounce up and down.)

The scan technique I use is to have a quick look around without binoculars and then a really good look with binoculars along the horizon line looking for "aberrations". Obviously I'm gunna see ships and large blobs, boats etc but I am looking for something I can't see, something thats there and not quite right. I continue the 360 scan and go back to the aberrations and study each one. Usually they are noting but often there is something there... Maybe a small boat thats between waves, maybe a hull down over the horizon but seeing the masts. If I still can't see anything, then on my next scan in 20 mins I will look for that aberration again. Often it has appeared! Not crazy after all... The UFO really was there. Sometimes is a bit of weather line too, a squall, or something.

So like the hoary old cliche looking but not seeing, when on deck pretending to be on 'constant' watch you still must do detailed scans using Roberts method, mine or some other useful method so you actually engage the brain and see intelligently what is there.




BTW I prefer crew competant enough not to need to be in the cockpit all the time. Better rested, better fed, better musiced, better fun stuffed are better crew imho. Well, on long passages anyway. On a Saturday afternoon treat them any way you like they have their whole week at work to sleep

[a64pilot]

This thread is going the way threads do, I'll try to give an example.

On another tech diving forum, a thread was brought up "do you always analyze your gas?"
Well, seeing as it is real hard to say no and defend that, of course all the replies were, of course I always analyze my gas, and then lots of discussion about how, when and how many times, but I used to dive a lot and watched people often, anlalizing gas was so un-common it would get my attention.

There just isn't any way that one or even two people can keep watch all the time, it's tough with three, but impossible singlehanding

On edit, need to define constant watch too, for me offshore it's a good scan of the horizon every 15 min or so ( I only have eyeballs to scan with, no RADAR or AIS), only last weekend got an auto-pilot so watches up to then were hands on so to speak.

[Rustic Charm]

Originally Posted by Randyonr3

Not good enough.. line of sight is roughly 7 miles, maybe a little more due to you being a couple feet above water line.
Container ships are known to travel at 30 knots or better.. So that 1/2 mile every minute... over a period of 15 minutes, Thats 7.5 miles and that container ship is closing down on you so fast it wont have time to alter corse, and when comming out of the cabin and seeing a ship closing down on you, I doubt youd have time to get out of his way..
and thats on calm seas.. any swell at all will change your sight......

A good response thanks. But, excuse my lack of experience, but what container ship travels at 30 knots or even close to that? Can you name some.

I've known of passenger ferries that do that, but nothing so big. The armed forces patrol ships?

[Kenomac]

Yes, definitely. One of us, my wife or I is always awake and keeping watch. Chart plotter, radar, AIS and visual every few minutes. As I almost found out the hard way last summer with a drunk onboard who wouldn't listen and couldn't be trusted to keep watch, a lot can happen in just eight minutes. During only eight minutes, our boat can travel a mile and a fishing boat at warp speed on a collision course can cover 2-3 miles. A Spanish Navy frigate or a container ship can cover 3-4 miles. After one near miss involving the idiot, I never again took my eyes off watch and went below until he was permanently removed from our boat.

Ken

[gjordan]

I would not worry too much about military vessels. They keep very good watches with lots of eyes and electronics. It is the fishing boats that scare me. One or maybe two guys , probably on the back deck working, and not having a lot of respect for us rag baggers. The only good thing is that they usually have enough lights on that you can see the glow over the horizon. Coastal watch keeping is far more stressful than deep water watches. Just another opinion. ______Grant.