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Sunrise - ARC2021 - Day #13 on the SUNRISE



We have a taylormade watch keeping schedule on SUNRISE for this voyage.
During our pre-journey video conference this was an important issue.
Being eight in total we agreed on forming four teams of two.
After some discussion on different options:
- a fixed watch schedule in which each crew member wakes up at the same time every night for his watch, so the organism can adapt more easily to a regular sleep rhythm;
- a shifting watch schedule in which the time slots revolve every day and each crew member gets to stand all the different watches during one cycle;
we finally agreed on the second one, because it distributes the highlights of the day and the unpleasant moments equally among all crew members.
Four watches also give us enough time to socialise as a group of friends.

During the night each team stands watch for three hours, during the day the length of each watch is 4 hours and the fourth "off watch" team holds the mother watch, that is preparing meals and tidying up our floating home.
As we have seven watch slots per day and four watches, the time slots shift one position each day. For example, watch A started at 1900 the first night and starts at 2200 the next, and so on.
During the regular watches the two crew members alternate at the steering wheel. The one not steering keeps the look-out, trims sails, serves drinks or snacks or keeps company to his colleague.
Maneuvers demanding more hands, such as reefing the main sail, rigging or shifting the spinnaker boom, we try to postpone to or plan for the moment of the change of watches.
With the genoa coming down unexpectedly when the belt loop that holds the head of the sail to the furling system broke, we had to perform the first of several unplanned maneuvers that demanded all hands and fortunately happened during daytime, when practically everyone was awake and stand-by to enter the struggle.

So far we are quite happy with our watch system.
Of course, none of us really sleeps as well as at home during this passage.
The ship is constantly moving, makes a lot of strange noises, it is hot inside, and we can,t open the windows properly.
But, if you expected that kind of pleasure cruise, you probably have booked the wrong trip.






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