Offshore Nighttime Watch Guidelines

[estarzinger]

As to the thread topic Beth and I always found watch-keeping schedule was best tailored to the individuals and circumstances. The two of us had quite different sleep cycles and needs, and different tolerances for environmental factors (like for instance cold, or boredom).

We took longer watches than most couples we knew, generally just split the night into two - I took first and she took second. But we did adapt it quite a bit depending on things (I tended to take more watch during storms or difficult situations, and we tried to keep me more rested thru the less stressed periods).

However, 'being flexible' is probably only a good idea for tight knit crews, where you know and trust each other. With less close crews it (unfortunately) can lead to resentment and charges of unfairness. With less close crews maintaining a complete agreement/understanding of 'fair treatment' is a more important captain's job than most realize. It is surprisingly easy for resentment of the smallest things to simmer under the surface until it explodes one day (I have seen that from both sides - from the captain's chair and from a crew seat lol).

I do have to agree with Pelagic about the 'decline in personal discipline' over the years. He come up from the pre-gps/pre-good autopilot era, and there was a change in the crew culture somewhere around then. In broad strokes previously being a 'seaman' and an 'ironman' were viewed as a desirable objective, whereas post the change not-so much. It is understandable because technology developed to the point where you could use it to compensate for being less of a seaman and ironman - which are challenging/interesting character developments but often not so fun .

That might sound like a classic "when I grew up we walked in bare feet uphill both ways in the snow to school" . . . . but it is in fact a (one of the) quite noticeable change in the cruising/sailing culture since the late 1980's.

[robert sailor]

We are clipped on in cockpit at night but not during the day unless it's really crappy or someone has to go forward. Neither of us will go forward at night without the other person fully awake and in the cockpit. My wife has one of those police type whistles that would wake up a dead person and if she needs help fast she blows it..I am awake and ready for action in a matter of seconds but the last time she blew it she had a giant cockroach walking back and forth on the wheel. I inspect the boat at least once each day for chafe or loose parts etc. Personally i find it too hot to wear pfd's during the day in normal weather, often I'm not wearing anything when it's really warm, can't even stand a t shirt. If your doing short handed ocean crossings it might make sense to do some practice while in settled conditions. My wife and I have had to both go forward to jibe a whisker pole in the wee small hours in rather boisterous conditions and we've done it so many times we hardly have to communicate with each other, it pays to practice. We used to fly the spinnaker 24 hours a day in the right conditions but now that I'm getting older we only fly it during the day. Personally while we all like to talk about the strong winds and big seas our experience has been that the biggest challenge has been to keep the boat moving in light air. We hate motoring offshore. Make sure you have some good light air sails because you'll need them. Your cardboard storm jib will probably never come out of the locker.,,,,

[Emouchet]

With 5 people on board, I would go 2 hours watch. This gives 8 hours in between watches.
If skipper is kept off watch, there is still 6 hours in between. Good for resting properly.

I am against 2 people on watch especially at night, as there is always one that will fall asleep. This is dangerous. There is not enough to keep busy 2 people, unless you are sailing in an very busy area with lots of traffic where 2 pairs of eyes are better than one.

[Capt.Don]

With multiple crew, we usually mixed-up the night watch persons. At dinner, we'd assess who needed more sleep or was wide-awake, and assign people to the watch slots. One advantage, over time, everyone shared the dark (cold) hours vs. beautiful sunrise shifts. Certain hours are easier, nicer. It all seemed to work out over several long passages with different crews.

Funny, how I usually ended up with the 2am-4am shift
Don

[Jim Cate]

The headline above that graph in the report is "Beware of . . . Standing up in Boats . . . " (and urinating is noted as a sub-set of 'standing up').

Evans, it occurs to me that this statistic is likely derived from small fishing boats ("tinnies") rather than cruising yachts. Pretty hard to hold on to anything, even with one hand, whilst standing in such boats, while most yachts offer various places where one can literally have one hand for oneself, one hand ON the ship!

I've always taken the zipper down corpse fable as just that... a fable, at least with respect to larger vessels. I doubt strongly that there have been enough bodies recovered at sea with their clothes in good enough array to actually determine if the fly is done up or not to generate good statistics. In inland lakes and streams it's a different matter, and I bet that's where the Canadian data comes from.

Jim

[JPA Cate]

I am against 2 people on watch especially at night, as there is always one that will fall asleep.

I have had only one time when I had someone up with me during my midnight to six to nine a.m. watch. She and I stayed awake with no problem. Therefore, I do not think that "always" people fall asleep. People who do not wish to fall asleep can stay awake. I used to leave the cockpit and walk the decks at night if I were feeling sleepy.

You CAN stay awake. Failure to do so is a lack of will: there are lots of things you can do to help stay awake.

Ann

[NevisDog]

Two quick comments (and thanks for all the great information here, really helpful):
1. peeing over the side is such a convenience (pun intended) in sheltered water that we all learn to do it (well, half of us anyway); when it gets a little lumpy I find it one of the most dangerous things to attempt at sea, even worse wearing oilies, so I just gave up doing it and pee in a bottle, then empty it overboard. Just be careful which bottle you choose to drink from on board SV CRISSI. Sorry, bad taste (pun also intended).
2. Staying awake is easier with a task in hand (keeping watch, chatting with watchkeeper maybe?), much harder if you are redundant to requirements, so why bother? (Unless maybe your task is to help the watchkeeper stay alert, which kinda defeats the purpose of having extra bodies aboard.)

[estarzinger]

Originally Posted by Jim Cate

this statistic is likely derived from small fishing boats ("tinnies") rather than cruising yachts.

I've always taken the zipper down corpse fable

Yes, I totally agree with both points. In the USCG data, small tinnies represent the bulk of many 'problems' including MOB. One reason I was curious about alcohol questions in the survey, is that there is a decent amount of beer drinking on these tinnies, which might create a need to pee, while not being at your most stable. So, there might be various cross correlations.

Fable is a good word. The fable is useful. Reminds people to have one hand for the ship. But I found the data point interesting because (as I said) I had not seen one before - it suggests that even for (probably) tinnies, the link between peeing and mob is pretty low (1 or 2 % of total MOB) close to near the statistical noise level. Which I find believable. I would not have been surprised if it had been as high as 5% of MOB's.

Originally Posted by JPA Cate

You CAN stay awake. Failure to do so is a lack of will: there are lots of things you can do to help stay awake.

I agree totally. I never had much trouble staying awake double handed with beth, but I learned this lesson when I took up single handing. Keeping a decent watch can be 'hard' but is simply/mostly a matter of will and personal discipline. You can not allow yourself to slack or get even the smallest bit lazy, I needed to kick myself if those thoughts even crossed my mind. However, you also need to know your actual hard limit - 3 days without sleep was mine (I was navigating in iceberg country solo, which is probably a stupid thing to do : ), my decision making was pretty decent up to that point but then it cratered. I might technically be awake, but damn my cognitive processes became really slow. At that point you need a plan to get some sleep - take some drugs if you need to gain just enough time in order to get somewhere you can rest semi-safely.

On working at the foredeck at night and tethers and life jackets . . . Beth and I were pretty competent and this might not apply well to more novice crew . . . . but we each could handle most foredeck work alone, our boat was specifically rigged for that, and we considered it extremely important to allow the off watch to get rested - we considered fatigue to be one of the major dangers double handed. So, each watch tended to do almost all their sailing alone without getting the other up - reefing, switch to and from a storm jib, jibing pole . . . all were set up to be pretty easy solo. However, we did each know out limits and we were each entirely comfortable calling for help when we thought we needed it and we respected each others judgement on that.

We pretty much never ever wore pfd's. We had both inflatables (with integral harnesses) and non-inflatables on board, and they were easily accessable. But I really cannot remember ever putting one on.

Our foul weather jackets had built in integral harnesses, and we had an assortment of pure (without pfd's) harnesses, including some really lightweight entirely custom fit ones I was shown how to make by a volvo rigger (you would never know you had a harness on with these). So, we did have harnesses on at some frequency, with tethers stowed in a pocket - ready to clip in if we ever felt like it would be desirable. But we were quite 'judicious' about actually clipping on to something. There was no 'rule' but generally if there was a sea running and you needed to stand and work with both hands you clipped as short as possible to a local hard point. We rarely clipped to the jacklines (which we did always have set). Our general thoughts and procedures on all this did not seem out of step with others who had similar experience . . . . but I would never suggest it was necessarily the best possible model for everyone.

As a related thought, we were 'brought up' to never lean on, or fully trust, the top life line. I was pretty diligent about life line inspection and maintenance . . . but we had extra quite good hand grips installed all the way up the boat and we both simply by reflex would always have a tight grip on those or the shrouds. I always thought you could tell an experienced seaman immediately by watching them walk up the deck, even in a slip - they always have a firm grip on something solid, they place their feet carefully, and have a low center of gravity.

[Argyle38]

Originally Posted by estarzinger

However, 'being flexible' is probably only a good idea for tight knit crews, where you know and trust each other. With less close crews it (unfortunately) can lead to resentment and charges of unfairness. With less close crews maintaining a complete agreement/understanding of 'fair treatment' is a more important captain's job than most realize. It is surprisingly easy for resentment of the smallest things to simmer under the surface until it explodes one day (I have seen that from both sides - from the captain's chair and from a crew seat lol).

This is exactly one of points I wanted to make since the beginning of this thread, just was fairly busy this week.

I don't think it's in general a good idea to have a 'casual' daytime watch for crew the know all know each other well, for this very reason. In the day time, in good weather, the situation will certainly be more casual, by the nature of people being daytime beings. Off watch folks will likely be up in the cockpit anyway, but someone should be "point person" for on watch duties, even if those duties might be passed off for a bit if the watch-stander wants to go make a sandwich or something. Otherwise, the potential for abuse, or perceived abuse will be there. In other words, a gentleman's agreement only works if everyone is a gentleman.

Otherwise, I generally don't put much stock in to this watch system or that watch system. (Within reason of course.) In my experience, if the weather is good, people will get plenty of rest. If the weather is bad, they won't.

[Dave_S]

With 2 onboard we did 3 hour shifts at night and loose arrangement during day. The off person slept close by in the saloon.

But if we had 4 on board I'd do 3 hour shifts for 2 people one night then rest those people the next night. Very easy for all I would think.

With 2 on we only did 3 nights and I felt 100% fine, I don't know about 10 nights but I think I'd be fine too.

[Paul L]

Passages with just my wife and I we use a flexible, somewhat informal, watch schedule. At night we both do a single long watch. With 3 people onboard the night schedule is formal, the day schedule is more flexible in normal conditions. With 4 people onboard the watch schedule is formal all day.

[Alan Mighty]

Originally Posted by estarzinger

It is 'questionnaire based' data. I presume that means they interviewed survivors on the boat. They mention alcohol elsewhere in the report, but did not (apparently) ask about alcohol use in this questionnaire - or I wonder if people lie about that if questioned by an 'authority'. As always with questionnaire based data, it would be interesting to see the actual set of questions asked.

Thanks again, I always have a million questions when I see a data point stated like that, but it does at least put some rough statistical parameters about the urinating issue.

Yes, the Canadian Red Cross statistics are questionnaire-based data.

Thanks to the CRC for asking the relevant question!

As for those who don't ask the question ... read on:

I looked at Australian and New Zealand drowning data.

Aus statistics are reported by the peak Surf Lifesaving body and by Aus Bureau of Stats. Both report boating deaths, including falls, and show male drownings by falls very much more than female drownings by falls at a level greater than male:female ratio in other boating deaths. Neither Lifesaving nor ABS asks the relevant question: was the male standing to urinate?

NZ data is interesting. Higher rate than Aus in most years. NZ puts in effort to discriminate between drowning that is related to suicide, homicide, and unintentional; and reporting drownings segregated by ethnic groups (Aus is doing more to segregate drowning data by Aus residents and tourists, a difference that is astonishing when looking at drownings on ocean beaches and recreational diving). But the question about urinating is avoided.

(A side note: a few decades back, road crash analysts in Aus dared to contemplate the question about how many suicides were road crashes. You can draw your own conclusion from the lack of meditation on that question since.)

NZ govt agencies and, as noted earlier in this thread, some Aus state govt agencies, continue to mention - to a greater or lesser extent - the risk of overboard situations in commercial fishing and shipping. Gotta be a reason for them to do that.

Of course, the great importance for males to observe their urine stream daily goes without saying. Hence the recommendation that crew inform another crew before voiding over the side.

Similarly, cruisers know the importance of sending urine directly over the side rather than through the boat's sewerage pipes. What more needs be said?

[Auspicious]

Hello Jeff,

Thoughts from the perspective of an offshore delivery skipper:

Five is lots of heads.

If you need two people on watch neither is suitable for watchstanding. I'm big on teaching and mentoring. That's different than trying to beef up competence with sheer numbers.

Do not focus on the length of watch. Focus on the amount of rest.

Reef when you need to reef, not because it is dark.

A clear schedule for watches is critical. There should never be any question of who is on watch. "Informal during the day" worries me.

In my experience dogging watches contributes to fatigue. People do best with a stable pattern. I've run the Swedish watch and splitting 4-8. Neither works as well as the standard 4-on/8-off. There are good reasons the professionals on commercial and military ships use it.

I expect crew to be adults and use their judgment. Sometimes good judgment means waking me up. *grin* I don't have a lot of rules. Don't leave the cockpit without someone else on deck is one.

PFDs, tethers, flotation suits et al are in my category of people using their judgment.

There is a difference between ducking below for a quick head call or to make a pot of coffee. Some crew will make a career out of what should be a few moments. It is your job as skipper to speak, privately, with those who take too long.

My standard crew on delivery is four people (including me). I have had as many as nine.

Without knowing you or your crew and assuming some level of competence on everyone's part I would put three on watch, 4-on/8-off, and one on galley duty. Look for volunteers. You may have to rotate galley. You as skipper do not stand a watch because as others have noted you are always on. If someone is incapacitated the galley drops into that slot and you cook.

I usually but not always get better weather fax at night than days so in the morning I go over weather during grayline and listen to the nets (Waterway and Cruiseheimers on the US East Coast). During breakfast we have a weather brief and crew meeting.

With 4-on/8-off breakfast should be at 8, lunch at 12, and dinner around 6 or 7. While not perfect this is least disruptive to sleep schedules.

Off-watch is responsible for being rested. That means a nap during the day, not just the longer sleep in the dark.

I don't have all the answers. I have done what you are proposing an awful lot with crews about the same size, almost often with people as crew I don't know well if at all. Drop me a line at dave@auspiciousworks.com if I can help. I'm offshore a lot so it may take a few days to get back to you.

[TrentePieds]

@ #73:

Eminently sensible. Added to MyBeloved's study materials, just so she'll know that I'm not "inventing" such things :-)

Cheers

TP

[JPA Cate]

Evans is right, there is a limit to will power keeping you awake, I should have mentioned that, but with enough time to rest, sleep will happen when you are tired enough, even in foul motion. You may not be as well rested, your sleep may be disturbed, but sleep will happen on your off watch, when you are tired enough. As Evans suggested, you may simply crash, fatigue is dangerous.

I think Auspicious' schedule makes sense, too.

Ann