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Mustique - The lonely night watch



The night watch is an interesting place. It has all the trials and fun
of sailing during the day but with a degree of pitch-black darkness thrown
in for good measure. I do the 0300-0600 watch and I have not seen the moon
for 3 weeks. I am starting to take it personally!
The night watch starts with a cup of coffee, a digestive biscuit (or three,
if the rest of the crew haven't hidden them from me), life jacket on, clip
on to the boat if conditions are rough, and then the traditional handing
over ceremony of the MOB bracelet, which the skipper had kindly invested in
before our trip. This operates via GPS and sounds an alarm if anyone becomes
more than 20m apart from the boat (i.e has gone over board). It's a nice
safety net on top of all the other safety nets!

A quick summary and handover from Scott who is finishing his watch and
itching to get to bed, although sleeping in these rolling sea conditions is
easier said than done. Imagine trying to sleep through an earthquake and you
get the gist! I regularly sleep on what used to be my cabin wall...

Then a few basic checks, wind strength, heading etc, squint into the
darkness and look on AIS for shipping traffic or other yachts, shine a torch
on the sails (currently a goose-wing plan with the addition of a staysail to
help control the death-rolls!), check the night sky for clouds and squalls,
we can use the radar too for this, and then settle down to watch the stars
and the horizon

And listen to all the sounds of a yacht at night - soft creaks, the fizzing and crashing of the waves around us and under us, the buffering of the wind in my ears, the howling of the wind through the boom and the rig, the occasional slap of a sail, the crash of the kettle stowed in the sink, the cupboard contents rattling and the occasional alarm - usually the wind vane advising of a wind shift.


The visual entertainment (other than squall-spotting) is the usual
phosphorescence, sparkling like diamonds in the sea as our hull breaks it
up, and the millionth shooting star, some of them so bright the cockpit of
the boat is lit up for a second as they burn through the atmosphere.

When a squall approaches, we are lucky enough to have furling sails, so a
mere press of a button and we are reefed to the necessary degree.

At 0600, Fin appears in the companionway, bleary eyed and slurring from
lack of quality sleep, and I, unsympathetic and in a rush to make my own
attempts at cat napping, pass on the MOB bracelet, brief him on the events
of the shift and scurry down to write the log before retiring to bed for a
few hours of cramming myself into all sorts of shapes and corners in an
attempt to reach the land of nod. And so it has been for 18 days and
nights! We are now about 250 miles from St Lucia, so only a few more night
watches to go and we will be tied up in a calm marina all getting a full 7
hours sleep

Becki

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