The most interesting of the watches in our watch system is the 0200-0600
watch. First of all it is the time your body is programmed to be asleep
and secondly it is the coldest and darkest part of the night. When
coming on at 2 in the night you first have to wake up, which is quite a
challenge because having had time off from 2200 to 0200 does not
necessarily mean you have actually been sleeping for 4 hours. In my case
sleep does not narturally happen at 2200 and by the time it is 0200 I
am in my deepest sleep, so not so awake. The first hour on deck I spend
waking up. After an hour I usually take over the helm because not many
people are yet able to steer the boat at night because the darkness
works disorientating. Then the battle with the eyelids starts:
open, closed, open, closed... no no OPEN!!! It is amazing how heavy
eyelids can be. I managed to nod off while steering the boat,not being
able to say for certain whether I was dreaming of the wind indicator in
the mast or whether I was actually looking at it. This happens
continuously and feels rather unreal. The second aspect of this watch is
the darkness itself. The moon usually disappeers behind the horizon
sometime before or during the 0200-0600 watch and we are trying to use
as little artificial light as possible. On a clear night (and we have
been very lucky so far) the stars and planets provide enough light to
make out the shape of the spinaker and the horizon so it is easy to
orientate yourself. Otherwise we are trying to memorise where every
rope, block and cleat or jammer is and work from memeory using a torch
as little as possible. The 0200-0600 watch also has it advantages:
sailing ain the dark is very challenging and doing a good job is
extremeley rewarding. The nights so far have been absolutely beautifull.
All different from each other but gorgeous. This morning was definitely
one not to forget. The winds were really light, the sea was like a
mirror, the starts bright and both venus and saturn's light was
reflected in the water. Keeping the boat at speed meant concentrated
helming, staying put not moving around much and all of us on watch just
turned silent. Apart from the occasional flog of the sails all we could
hear were the ripples the boat created in the water. The algae did their
usual job and turned every ripple into a bright lightened stripe on the
water. Fantastic! I am hooked.
Did I alreay mention we have taken the lead in the fleet for now?
