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Old 30-04-2015, 23:48   #61
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pirate Re: Advice, How to Maintain Watch & Sail When Solo Thru 24 Hr's. (+) Time Periods ?

This is something I wrote a few years back on here.. so I'll repeat it now.. When I get my head down at sea I tend to wake for seemingly unexplained reasons.. I'll stick my head outs the hatch and usually there's lights approaching over the horizon..
Now you can take this with as many grains of salt as you wish but I put it down to my years as a submarine chaser (old style) in the Navy.. and a couple of years intensive hunting for NATO exercises when based with Portland Squadron.. engine noise travels extremely long distances through the water..
I assume my sub-concious mind picks this out from the familiar boat sounds and alerts me into wakefullness..
So far So good.. so I'll continue..
Call it a sixth sense one has but is often lost with a city life but veteran sailors and hunters of old will back this sense up..
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Old 01-05-2015, 00:14   #62
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Re: Advice, How to Maintain Watch & Sail When Solo Thru 24 Hr's. (+) Time Periods ?

Ok, I'm going to take the hook.

Firstly, there is no requirement to keep a look out whilst anchored. I'd love to see a link to that decision so I could see the reasoning.

Secondly, and I know this one will bring on those who disagree with solo sailing, I don't believe it's a failure to follow the COLREGS or impossible to 'nap' and follow the COLREGS at all. That is a far to rigid and unreasonable reading of them.

I'm yet to begin my solo passages. I almost did my first solo a couple months ago but turned back with a mechanical problem.
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Old 01-05-2015, 00:53   #63
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Re: Advice, How to Maintain Watch & Sail When Solo Thru 24 Hr's. (+) Time Periods ?

;( ;(
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Old 01-05-2015, 00:55   #64
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Re: Advice, How to Maintain Watch & Sail When Solo Thru 24 Hr's. (+) Time Periods ?

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Firstly, there is no requirement to keep a look out whilst anchored. I'd love to see a link to that decision so I could see the reasoning.
.
You may check the small prints of your insurrance company.
What is described in your contract has "unattended boat", or "un-manned", depending upon what linguo they use.
Worth checking with them if these Anchor watch apps working remotely with smartphones are regarded as a valid way of keeping your boat "on watch" or "manned".
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Old 01-05-2015, 01:48   #65
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Re: Advice, How to Maintain Watch & Sail When Solo Thru 24 Hr's. (+) Time Periods ?

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Ok, I'm going to take the hook.

Firstly, there is no requirement to keep a look out whilst anchored. I'd love to see a link to that decision so I could see the reasoning.

Secondly, and I know this one will bring on those who disagree with solo sailing, I don't believe it's a failure to follow the COLREGS or impossible to 'nap' and follow the COLREGS at all. That is a far to rigid and unreasonable reading of them.

I'm yet to begin my solo passages. I almost did my first solo a couple months ago but turned back with a mechanical problem.
the more I read my second point, the more uncomfortable I am with what I posted. It IS often a failure to follow the COLREGS that leads to these collisions involving solo sailors. So I didn't mean that as I first posted it.

Is it possible to 'nap' and still follow the COLREGS? Yes, it is possible to solo sail, to rest, and to follow the COLREGS. However it becomes difficult and the burden on the solo sailor increases significantly. A solo sailor taking five minutes to go below to the head, or to make a cup of coffee, can be said to be obeying the COLREGS as long as all satisfactory checks for the circumstances were made before going below. However, if you then are involved in a collission during that five minutes you have clearly neglected the COLREGS.

Unmmm that's more what I meant.
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Old 01-05-2015, 03:36   #66
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Re: Advice, How to Maintain Watch & Sail When Solo Thru 24 Hr's. (+) Time Periods ?

Phil. Bit of a thread drift but, There's an interesting podcast I hear once, maybe someone has a link, about a guy that recently navigated around the world using no electronics or navigation equipment. He navigated by the angle of the ground swells, angle of the surface currents and waves, sea and air temperatures, upper and lower level cloud types and directions, types of sea life and bird life closer to land and even calculated his approximate latitude by humidity when he heard a hatch squeak on it's rails that didn't normally squeak. He managed to hit his landfalls within 50M after crossing oceans. He was trying to tune into a lot of the old techniques sailors used before modern navigation (before the sextant) and found it possible. It's true modern navigation dulls the senses and often modern sailors are more tuned in to the chart plotter than the clouds. Good on you for staying tuned to your natural senses.

RC. Fortunately the colregs are black and white. I don't think there's any areas that are open for interpretation and yes that are rigid which is a good thing in my book. Rule 5 clearly says a proper watch should be maintained at all times (abbreviated) which doesn't mean all times except when napping or ducking below for a cuppa. They could be rewritten to include those phrases but then they just become useless. I've had a couple of very near misses with vessels not following the colregs so I'm all for sailors knowing and adhering to them as much as possible. In the case of solo sailors on long passages they can adhere to all except rule 5, which is good enough for me and I attempt the same when solo or fully crewed. I'd hate to see that rule enforced by law as some of the other rules currently are as it would mean the end of a long and beautiful chapter of sailing, forged by the likes of Slocum, Chichester, Mortissier, Taberly, Dumas et al.
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Old 01-05-2015, 08:35   #67
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Re: Advice, How to Maintain Watch & Sail When Solo Thru 24 Hr's. (+) Time Periods ?

A Robotic Helmsman... is the answer for the Solo Sailor of Tomorrow.

Yes, a Robotic Helmsman (above) is a little bit on the satire side of things but our technology is here and has been for over twenty years. We have had auto land aircraft since the 1970's. I have flown military aircraft with -- autopilots, that's completely coupled to nav. and does it all; also, terrain & aircraft avoidance. We have cars that are being tested/ developed to drive themselves as you sit in the back.

I was shopping/ looking at stand alone AIS systems and the available features. They have collision alarms and can track five different vessels that present a collision hazard(s). I can assume that higher ended avionics systems on high dollar (mega yachts, etc.) ships do it all, and similar to high dollar aircraft.

Today, it's all about $$$ cost and how integrated you'd want your system engineered to fit your needs. If I was designing it, I'd want it to be as close as possible to the full up systems we have in aircraft. I'd start off with a fully Navigational Autopilot, AIS/ Radar Monitoring with Auto Steer Way from Traffic. Complete Vessel Monitoring -- Operating Vitals, Hull Security, Intruder Security, Up Dating Weather, including Extreme Weather Warnings. Emergency Transponder Output when selected or auto when the hull is filling up with water at a set depth level.

I'm just thinking off the cuff and I'm sure that the older salts would have other ideas that they'd want to spec. out with their fully automated Robotic Helmsman .

Avery
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Old 01-05-2015, 08:43   #68
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Re: Advice, How to Maintain Watch & Sail When Solo Thru 24 Hr's. (+) Time Periods ?

Quote:
Originally Posted by boatman61 View Post
This is something I wrote a few years back on here.. so I'll repeat it now.. When I get my head down at sea I tend to wake for seemingly unexplained reasons.. I'll stick my head outs the hatch and usually there's lights approaching over the horizon..
Now you can take this with as many grains of salt as you wish but I put it down to my years as a submarine chaser (old style) in the Navy.. and a couple of years intensive hunting for NATO exercises when based with Portland Squadron.. engine noise travels extremely long distances through the water..
I assume my sub-concious mind picks this out from the familiar boat sounds and alerts me into wakefullness..
So far So good.. so I'll continue..
Call it a sixth sense one has but is often lost with a city life but veteran sailors and hunters of old will back this sense up..
I don't have your navy experience, but can attest to the rest of what you've said. I don't hear real well at some frequencies, but in the range produced by engines at sea my ability to hear is acute. Responding to changes in motion, the odd wave slapping against the hull and indistinct change in sounds are all likely to rouse me from sleep.

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Old 01-05-2015, 08:46   #69
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Re: Advice, How to Maintain Watch & Sail When Solo Thru 24 Hr's. (+) Time Periods ?

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Originally Posted by HighFly_27 View Post
A Robotic Helmsman... is the answer for the Solo Sailor of Tomorrow.

Yes, a Robotic Helmsman (above) is a little bit on the satire side of things but our technology is here and has been for over twenty years. We have had auto land aircraft since the 1970's. I have flown military aircraft with -- autopilots, that's completely coupled to nav. and does it all; also, terrain & aircraft avoidance. We have cars that are being tested/ developed to drive themselves as you sit in the back.

I was shopping/ looking at stand alone AIS systems and the available features. They have collision alarms and can track five different vessels that present a collision hazard(s). I can assume that higher ended avionics systems on high dollar (mega yachts, etc.) ships do it all, and similar to high dollar aircraft.

Today, it's all about $$$ cost and how integrated you'd want your system engineered to fit your needs. If I was designing it, I'd want it to be as close as possible to the full up systems we have in aircraft. I'd start off with a fully Navigational Autopilot, AIS/ Radar Monitoring with Auto Steer Way from Traffic. Complete Vessel Monitoring -- Operating Vitals, Hull Security, Intruder Security, Up Dating Weather, including Extreme Weather Warnings. Emergency Transponder Output when selected or auto when the hull is filling up with water at a set depth level.

I'm just thinking off the cuff and I'm sure that the older salts would have other ideas that they'd want to spec. out with their fully automated Robotic Helmsman .

Avery
A couple of extra batteries and solar panels may be in order too.
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Old 01-05-2015, 09:15   #70
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Re: Advice, How to Maintain Watch & Sail When Solo Thru 24 Hr's. (+) Time Periods ?

A couple of you have mentioned my free Singlehanded Tips book and the chapter I wrote on managing sleep. In the published version of the book I talk about something else that I think is equally important. I call it "the 3 am effect". It is the fact that at 3 am, I am an incoherent, clumsy, bumbling oaf. Not the elite athlete that I am in the middle of the afternoon.

It is at 3 am that I can be found steering directly towards a ship, just because my mind doesn't recognize what I am looking at, tripping over lines and falling in the cockpit, and making a dozen other mistakes. I am certain that Jessica Watson's collision with a ship was a result of the 3 am effect (even though it happened at midnight).

So yes, you do need to prepare for sleep, but you also must prepare for being awake in the middle of the night.

As for drugs, etc. There are a number of natural ways to keep energy levels high without the crash of caffeine. The easiest is vitamins with iron. Start taking these several weeks before your voyage. Another is Ginseng Root. Cancer patients who are undergoing chemotherapy use this to keep their energy up. And nuts in general are very helpful. The idea behind these is that when you sleep, you want to sleep, and when you are awake, you want to be awake. You don't want to be in a zombie state somewhere in-between these.

Have fun.
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Old 01-05-2015, 10:05   #71
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Re: Advice, How to Maintain Watch & Sail When Solo Thru 24 Hr's. (+) Time Periods ?

It is like trying to drive cross-country and capnap while still on the Interstate at speed.


I have some experience with fatigue and sleep deprivation. The folks who say they can safely use an egg-timer or alarm and push on through, have been lucky and failed to read the many reports of vessels lost on the rocks and reefs by equally confident sailors. Some prominent and respected authors among them.


My personal best has been to get down from a bunk bed, remove a small keyed padlock on the alarm clock so it could be shut, then climb back into the (upper) bunk bed and go back to sleep. The padlock was there to make sure there was no way in hell the alarm could accidentally be shut. Ha.


Long distance solo sailing? Fine if it works for you. The last hundred years of research into sleep and fatigue study say everyone is different, but for the average or typical human, you MUST get one 6-hour "long sleep" every day, or your performance and mental acuity will degrade, whether you think so or not.


And drivers falling asleep at the wheel of their cars? Are now said to be very close to the number of drunk drivers killed every year. No recent change, except in reporting the incidents instead of sweeping them under the rug.
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Old 01-05-2015, 10:06   #72
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Re: Advice, How to Maintain Watch & Sail When Solo Thru 24 Hr's. (+) Time Periods ?

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A couple of you have mentioned my free Singlehanded Tips book and the chapter I wrote on managing sleep. In the published version of the book ....

[...]
Cannot find ISBN of your book.

NB : I have seen that it is available on Amazon, NOT interested buying from them, I support small bookshops.
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Old 01-05-2015, 10:49   #73
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Re: Advice, How to Maintain Watch & Sail When Solo Thru 24 Hr's. (+) Time Periods ?

An acquaintance named Tom sailed from Seattle to the South Pacific and then here to Hilo single-handed. It was late when he saw the lights of Hilo and set his course for them and went below to fix a pot of tea. When he woke his boat was on the rocks and holed so badly that he had to abandon immediately. He was cut, bruised, and had some debilitating injuries when he made his way up the cliffs to the road. He spent a couple days in the hospital. His boat was done in and pilfered. His windvane system went one direction and all his sailing gear went another. He was able to retrieve an outboard that someone had retrieved and gave back to him. He got some of his important papers later and a firearm.

When he recounted his story to us at our club meeting one evening he cried when told of his boat, the systems on it and it's loss.
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Old 01-05-2015, 11:22   #74
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Re: Advice, How to Maintain Watch & Sail When Solo Thru 24 Hr's. (+) Time Periods ?

Got 32 days free time ahead ?
Want to make $7,500

Harvard looking for volunteers :

https://sleep.med.harvard.edu/resear...nts_Aged_18-35!

Perhaps, we could discuss about what science has to say about sleep management...
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Old 01-05-2015, 11:35   #75
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Re: Advice, How to Maintain Watch & Sail When Solo Thru 24 Hr's. (+) Time Periods ?

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An acquaintance named Tom sailed from Seattle to the South Pacific and then here to Hilo single-handed. It was late when he saw the lights of Hilo and set his course for them and went below to fix a pot of tea. When he woke his boat was on the rocks and holed so badly that he had to abandon immediately. He was cut, bruised, and had some debilitating injuries when he made his way up the cliffs to the road. He spent a couple days in the hospital. His boat was done in and pilfered. His windvane system went one direction and all his sailing gear went another. He was able to retrieve an outboard that someone had retrieved and gave back to him. He got some of his important papers later and a firearm.

When he recounted his story to us at our club meeting one evening he cried when told of his boat, the systems on it and it's loss.
Whether sailing solo or with crew, skippers of boats near land have to consider whether or not to make an approach at night with special care. Traffic, current, wind strength and direction, the presence or absence of navigational aids - especially channel markers and leading lights - are factors that must always be taken into account. Regardless, as your story illustrates, a single hander suffering from fatigue must consider heaving to very early on. Long before the option becomes unreasonable due to nearness to land and the movement of traffic. Currents will be weaker farther from land and which tack you heave onto will then only be determined by wind direction and course. The farther from land you are the less likely it is your direction of travel will be limited by land and or traffic patterns. Your friend screwed up by not heaving to....
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