Friday 3rd October
THE LONLIENESS OF A LONG DISTANCE NIGHT WATCH KEEPER
One of our ex-crew member?s girlfriends some years ago famously asked him if we put down the anchor at night and went to sleep! A little difficult to achieve even if desirable in 3000 metres of water as we are now!
We do of course keep watch ?all of the day and all of the night!? On this cruise we are working one up 2 ½ hours on and 7 ½ off with a dog watch 6.30 till 8.00 pm when we are all in theory on deck for pre-dinner drinks and dinner, although in practice I am cooking down below a lot of this time. This is a pretty easy routine, the autopilot does the work, we watch the radar, the AIS (automatic identification system) and we scan the night sky every 5 or 10 minutes for small fishing boats that might not appear on the radar and we may even trim or reef the sails! The rest of the time we amuse ourselves very often with our IPODS, some read (although not great for night vision) and some like me write logs and answer emails (also not great for night vision)!
Others are not so lucky, a few like James on Cleone, do not use their autopilots (for power consumption reasons among others) and few have the luxury of 4 watch keepers! Most of Blue Water Rally boats are husband and wife teams and 4 on 4 off or whatever they work is tough going! So we are able to take life a bit more easily!
Not much happening again today. Malcy was on bacon sandwiches for lunch, I was on steak for dinner. Lindsey and Ian had a Suduko challenge, which Ian won (I didn?t join in it has no interest for me) and we listened to a CD episode one of ?Clare in the Community? hilarious escapades of a hapless politically correct social worker.
We expect to arrive in Bali in 24 hours at around 6 am.