Our night watch was uneventful except for the last hour when we set the flying jib and gaff topsail and
then 10 minutes later a squall boiled up astern and we had to take them in again. That was OK because the
squall literally evaporated and by then it was the end of the watch. Setting and taking in sail is preferable
to “soogying” any day.
Found this nice note on the salon door:
So what is a typical day like for me at sea on one of these passages?
I’ll start with what I’ve been calling the “night watch”.
I am on the 4-8 watch. This means I am in the group that starts their watch at 4:00am and runs to 8:00am. We also have an “afternoon watch” that runs from 4:00pm to 8:00pm.
It always seems that I have been asleep for only a little while when I hear a stage whispered “Kevin”
beside my head through the curtains of my bunk. This is followed by a second “Kevin” a few seconds
later if I don’t respond. A grunt won’t do, you have to say “Yes” or “yup” or some indication you are
awake. The person doing the wake up will then say something like “It’s 3:30 this is your wakeup for
watch.” They will also say something about the weather so we know if we need jackets or fowlies. This wake up is always 15 minutes before we are expected on deck which is formally at 3:50.
I tumble out of my bunk, sometimes literally if I misjudge the roll :-), get dressed, don my safety harness,
my rig (which is my knife and marlin spike which is on a separate belt). I make sure my hat is hooked to
my collar and climb up the salon ladder to the main deck.
The on coming watch musters on the port side the off going on the starboard side. The watches are relieved at 10 minutes to the hour as are the helm and lookout.
Once everybody in the watch is there the AB, in our case it’s Ben, details the various watch positions for
the next four hours. Each watch is slightly different depending on how the AB likes to organize the
rotations. A typical job would be 1st helm and 4th lookout. This means that I would get to be on the helm
for the first hour and lookout for the last hour. There is always someone on helm and lookout. Other jobs
are wake ups for the engineers at 5:30, the galley crew at 6:15, Kolin the bosun at 7:00 and the next watch
which is 8-12 at 7:15. The Daymen like the sailmaker, rigger etc get their wakeups at 7:15 as well.
Say I got first helm last lookout (actually one of my favourite sets as is first lookout last helm). I would
immediately go to relieve the current person on the helm. After an hour at 10 minutes to 5:00 or so, I
would be relieved, passing on the current course to the new helmsman. They repeat the course back to me
which lets me know they heard it correctly then they formally take the helm by saying “I have her” or
something to that effect :-). Then I would go to the mate of the watch, in this case Veronica, and report “I
am relieved, Nick has the helm, North North West” or whatever. She also repeats the course back to me
for the same reason.
I then fill out the log with the course, taffrail log reading, barometer, wind speed and direction, swell size
and direction, visibility and cloud cover.
I then go and sit on one of the veggie lockers and chat, if it is still dark, or join the other members of my
watch doing whatever is doing if it’s not.
4-8 is interesting because we get both dawn and sunset and the ship is both waking up at the end of the
“night watch’ and settling down at the end of the “afternoon watch”. This means there generally is no
painting or maintenance work to do (yay!), but often sail handling in preparation for the night/day. There
is aften a slight wind shift at dawn and dusk which means we have the brace the yards a bit as well.
In the morning one of our other duties is to do a “deck wash” once the engineers have the generator
online, which is about 6:00am typically. They fire up one of the fire pumps and we wash down the decks
with sea water while scrubbing them with rough deck brushes. This helps to breakup the salt and slime
that makes the decks slippery. It also keeps the planking from shrinking in the sun. Off the coast of Africa
it was necessary to removed large amounts of Saharan dust which coated everything.
Once the deck wash is done we typically do a “soogy” of the superstructure, the pin rails and the galley
house on the main deck and the chart house and rails on the quarter deck. To soogy is to take fresh water
and a rag or sponge and wash the salt off everything. I prefer sail handling :-)
When we get to the end of our watch we muster and are formally relieved by the mate saying two magic
words… “Watch below”. On 4-8 this coincides with a second layout of breakfast on the Aloha deck aft.
My favorite meal I think.
After breakfast I typically head below and do this, ie update my posts, read, do my celestial navigation
calcs and snooze till lunchtime at noon. The 4 hours after noon till 4:00pm are the same, more snoozing,
reading, project work or if I feel gung ho I can lay in with the gang working on deck.
We muster at 3:50pm and the process starts again. The big difference with the afternoon watch is that we
start by doing cleanups of the deck from the work done during the day and we also clean the galley after
dinner. Since dinner is in the middle of our watch at 6:00 we have to eat fairly quickly and make sure to
make plates for those on watch and helm. We always relieve them temporarily so they can eat as well.
When we finally muster at 7:55pm or so Veronica will give us a bit of info on where we are, things she
liked or things she didn’t and then it’s that lovely “watch below”. At which point I usually hit the rack to
try and sleep till I get that whispered “Kevin…Kevin” at 3:30 the next morning to start all over again.
Thanks for reading.
KJ
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