The Magic of the Night Watch….

I know it sounds crazy, but I really do enjoy my night watches. Of course my sleep is interrupted but the closeness that I feel to the ocean and sky is amazing. I noticed on the way back up that I started thinking about how few night watches we have left. Most people would think that’s a good thing, but I really enjoy my time alone at sea. To give you an idea of how Crossroads does a night crossing, I will walk you through the get-ready of the passage, then the actually passage.

I get pretty anxious the day we are getting ready to leave a harbor for an overnight. I am not sure why, but I do. As soon as the anchor is up, however, and we are out at sea, I feel relaxed and at peace.

The get ready: Glenn puts on the jack lines (lines on deck that we can clip into with our harnesses), ties everything down on deck, removes sail covers, checks the engine and oil, etc. I secure the stuff down below, stuff towels around things that clank, make sure our ditch bag is readily accessible and make sandwiches.

Glenn and I don’t like to spend a lot of time down below while underway. We have been very fortunate so far and have not gotten seasick, but we don’t want to press our luck. I usually make up some mac and cheese or something that I can heat up quickly and we keep lots of snacks in the cockpit. Now for the music, I love to listen to my ipod (thanks FHAO staff) while I am on my 11:30-2:30 watch. I sing along while, of course, Glenn is down below trying to sleep. I cannot carry a tune in a bucket, I mean I am bad and Glenn swears I don’t know half the words to the songs I am singing. If it is a calm night and we are actually getting to sail, I usually prefer to hand steer so that I can dance with the steering wheel. Of course if it is really calm and we have to motor then I let Ray (Charles - our auto pilot) steer the boat. So far I have been lucky on our night passages. From Trinidad on, Glenn was had most of the squalls on his watches while I was down below sleeping like a baby.

I usually get sleepier earlier than Glenn so he is on watch from 8:00-11:00 PM. We have little transition time when we talk about anything that happened on our watch, then I take the 11:30- 2:30 and Glenn takes the 2:30-5:30. I get to watch the sun rise during the 5:30-8:30 shift, which is another cool thing about a night watch. Glenn gets less sleep because we are usually arriving at our destination by 7:00 or 8:00 AM so he gets up to assist with our entry into the harbor. I grab some pop tarts and a Diet Coke and we have hobbit first breakfast before we get in. Once we get our anchor down and feel secure about our position we usually have hobbit second breakfast and go to bed.

Michele