Fifth question: Sailing alone, and sleep

[Hasbeen]

53,000 miles around the Pacific, & Australian east coast.


On the coast I would get well off shore, 20 miles or more, then sleep most of the day in a couple of hours cat naps. Stayed awake all night, usually reading in the cockpit. I had too many close crossings of ships that had obviously not seen me to ever sleep at night on the coast .


Out in the big Pacific I took my chance & slept when tired. Never had a close call I knew about, & rarely saw more than a couple of ships a year.

[TabbyCat]

Originally Posted by Don C L

II certainly understand the argument that it is poor seamanship to not keep watch. I just consider it worse to put yourself at greater risk of making really poor choices due to lack of sleep.

I think it's very selfish of single handers to think only of their chances of hitting a whale, or a cargo ship, without considering the damage they may do to a fellow sailor. The real hazard is other cruisers. We all tend to follow the same rhumb line routes. Twice on trips between FIJI and NZ I've come in close contact with single-handers who were soundly asleep. It is surprising how quickly a close encounter happens. In the last case, the other boat was erratically heading to port, then to starboard. We were doing the classisc dance. We tried hailing over the VHF "What are your intentions, captain" with no reply. Finally turned on motors and headed 90 degrees from our course to avoid his erratic course. Hailed over the loudspeaker, and up popped a sleepy, confused sailor. It turns out his crazy course was due to a poorly set or malfunctioning wind vane. If we had not been keeping our 24/7 watch, there would surely have been a collision. It's simply not fair to the other boaters for single handers to put us all at risk by not doing their part to avoid a collision. Would you drive your car on the highway asleep? If you are single-handing, please stay far away from the rhumb line "traffic" routes. Or better yet, get crew for passages and maintain a proper 2/7 watch. Thanks!

[Bycrick]

Any time you’re not keeping an awake, effective watch, you’re rolling the dice. I’ve almost run into a huge tree trunk, longer than my 37’ boat, halfway between Tahiti and Hawaii. And come within 100' of a huge oceanographic buoy 600 miles west of the Galapagos. Both at almost high noon. I had the depth sounder transducer pop out of the through hull half way across the Gulf of Tehuantepec. If that had happened 15 minutes sooner than it did, my first warning would have been my beard getting wet, while I napped in the cockpit.



So it’s not just a problem with big ships. There’s lots of other things that can go wrong, even when you’re napping or otherwise not paying good attention. Most of the time, you’ll probably get away with it.

[MicHughV]

I knew a South African family that sailed from Cape Town to Caribbean. Husband, wife, two small children, on a homemade cat, built on the guy's driveway.
Come night time, the whole family " went to bed"...no watches, no alarms....nothing...nada..zilch....to them, the boat was "just like home", except it floated.

Crazy, maybe, but that's how they did it...

[mattdana78]

Just stay up at night and sleep on and off most of the day.
One way to make week long or greater passages easier is to flip your schedule a few days prior to setting off.
Always have most of your meals premade or frozen—>oven.

[john manning]

My offshore and coastal sailing is with a crew of 2 normally. When coastal we try to stop once every 48 hours for a nights sleep. Offshore we hove to for 6-8 hours every third night for sleep. This strategy reduces the need to catnap during watches. However I still use a 15 minute watch alarm and have dozed of at times.

If solo I would hove to every night for 4 hours sleep. AIS on broadcast mode and radar on 6 mile alarm zone.

While offshore I seldom see other vessels but the ocean is a busy place. Check marinetraffic.com to see where you are likely to find other vessels.

[thomm225]

14 year old Laura Dekker seems to have figured out how to sail solo around the world and get some sleep. She doesn't look like she has gone without sleep and she circumnavigated.

Of course being 14 helps.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRU8tIxroN8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luUpdoiwAdY

[Jim Cate]

Any time you’re not keeping an awake, effective watch, you’re rolling the dice. I’ve almost run into a huge tree trunk, longer than my 37’ boat, halfway between Tahiti and Hawaii.

So, you are implying t hat had the encounter been in the dark hours, being asleep would have meant a different outcome than if you had been awake and on watch? When it is dark, seeing such objects is pretty difficult IME, and if your radar is set to detect vessels at a useful range, they (things like tree trunks) don't show up there either.

Might as well be asleep... at least for short periods.

Jim

[dpreacher]

Deepwater singlehanding is a little bet different from coastal. Good AIS with good alarms, good radar with good alarms, good sonar with good alarms, sleep during the day, and keep your fingers crossed.

[opusnz]

It depends where you are. I was on one trip where about 15 yachts left harbor at once. It was the other yachts you had to worry about, and days later we were still close to them and worried about bumping into them. Most of them didn't have AIS and some of them had crappy electrical systems with high drain autopilots or fridges so didn't use nav lights properly at night. They should have spent some money on LED nav lights and less on meat for their freezer. Their priorities were all screwed up.

Fishing fleets and military don't use AIS. This can be a huge problem in some areas.

The first few single-handed trips I took, I tried to get up every half hour or so. I did this for a week or more at a time and I never got any good deep sleep. Looking back at it, I was eager, young and stupid. I had no reserve if anything really went wrong. Some single handers I have met went to the opposite extreme and just sleep 8 hours straight. They were playing the odds but that just seems irresponsible to me. They also made long passage times when they wake up hours later and found out that their boat had been going in the wrong direction.

I now have AIS and a good radar with a guard zone. I will sleep an hour or two at a time. I don't think it really matters if it is day or night when you sleep unless you are in coastal areas when during daylight it can get busy. It is really just common sense.

[Don C L]

Originally Posted by thomm225

14 year old Laura Dekker seems to have figured out how to sail solo around the world and get some sleep. She doesn't look like she has gone without sleep and she circumnavigated.

Of course being 14 helps.

I had to laugh at this one. When I was young and I sailed with my 16 year-old friend, he'd sleep for 10 hours straight! I couldn't wake him up!

[Rockinar]

Originally Posted by river251

Sailing alone with AIS, and windvane steering or autopilot, can you get a few consecutive hours of sleep at night, or does the need for watching make that impossible? Coastal or trans-ocean..what do you do?

Thanks,
Jim

Id rather have radar than AIS. Radar detects everything...Boats, land, unlit oil platforms, North Korean ghost ships.....AIS only detects boats, and only boats that are transmitting

[thomm225]

Originally Posted by Don C L

I had to laugh at this one. When I was young and I sailed with my 16 year-old friend, he'd sleep for 10 hours straight! I couldn't wake him up!

Nice.

Laura Dekker was a bit different and may have slept a bit less during her 366 days at sea.

Here she is a 13 battling in court to be able to circumnavigate which made her have to wait until she was 14 years old before she could leave.

Amazing, but at the same time, a 14 year old with her experience definitely has the body to solo sail for long distances. She's quite muscular and that larger boat has probably made her even stronger

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PCbn1T2Tfw

Here she is checking in with her parents......like any 14 year old right?!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNhJrku4GL4

[thomm225]

Laura Dekker in a storm at night sailing upwind in 25 knots plus off Cape Town.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4uuSgRkkEY

[sailorboy1]

I think people all worried about hitting boats in middle of night off shore haven't spend a lot nights doing it. Except for near a major shipping channel there is no one to hit. My wife and I maintain a watch, but never have seen any boat within probably 10 miles except for the shipping lanes.