Singlehanded full night sleep?

[dbaoter]

One comment, all this discussion on single handing at night. What about sleeping during the day. Have heard of boats being hitcduring the day. Scarcer during the night. Have to deal with the issue during daylight

[boatman61]

Originally Posted by dbaoter

One comment, all this discussion on single handing at night. What about sleeping during the day. Have heard of boats being hitcduring the day. Scarcer during the night. Have to deal with the issue during daylight

That's because folks mistakenly assume daylight means other boats can see you much better and avoid you.. assuming they are not all down below having cheese n wine..
Trouble is fully crewed boats make the same assumption..

[jalmberg]

I don’t single-hand, but for me, it’s more natural to sleep at night. On long passages, it’s important to keep as much normalcy as possible - food, sleep, routines. The more disruptions, the more exhausting the trip, in my experience.

[sailorladd]

I single handed once from Australia to New zealand and on up to Hawaii via the three Cook island.

I never had a problem other than when running down the north eastern coast of Australia in the beginning, and sailing in the strong southerly current to gain speed, but so were a string of oil and container ships, and I was rudely awakened one night by the ominous sound of a very large vessel too close for comfort! leaping out of my bunk I was in time to see very clearly all the details of an oil tanker not more than about a hundred yards off!!
I saw crew members riding bicycles along the deck... I realized this was a very close call and I learnt a good lesson!
All my subsequent sailing from then on up to Hawaii was carefully navigated to keep well off all shipping lanes, regardless of how many extra miles I had to make up.

I usually found that when I was dog tired, I would sleep until my body was refreshed, but during the course of the day I would take as many catnaps as I could...and at night no question about leaving a nav light on, and scanning the horizons at regular intervals when awake...

[jalmberg]

Thinking outside the box, considering how many people have dogs on boats, I wonder if it would be possible to train a dog to bark when it heard/saw/felt a nearby ship? I bet they can hear the sound of engines through the water pretty far off. Sure would be handy to have a dog on watch! Never heard of such a thing, though, so...

[botanybay]

Originally Posted by Snore

Ohhhh

This is going to be fun. Getting another cup of coffee in anticipation

Popcorn here

[Happ]

Originally Posted by MJH

I'm glad this topic came up as I have been following the Vendee Globe solo, nonstop, non-assisted race around the world. They are obviously not on watch 24/7 and I noted most are not wearing life jackets when on video...but what the hell, they're pros...right.

My only experience solo on a long passage was in the Gulf of Mexico (Key West, Florida to Texas). To make matters more interesting I had a complete power failure on a new-to-me boat two days out. I passed a message to the USCG via a passing work-boat on my portable VHF of my lights out no emergency condition and continued...the rest of the story is for another time.

I slept in the cockpit with my arm around the port winch, wake up, check location on my handheld Garmin 45, pump the bilge, point the boat (Monitor windvane) to the darkest point on the horizon (lots of oil rigs out there) and go back to sleep. I began to hallucinate near the end of the voyage but still knew they were not real...go figure. I obviously was not getting enough sleep. Therefore, hove-to for a good nights sleep is preferred.

I don't know how those Vendee Globe sailors do it, now into their 67+ day; I salute them.

~ ~ _/) ~ ~

I knew Brad Van Liew when I was in California. He’s one 2 Singlehanded around the world races. These guys do sleep on intervals of 1-20 minute naps. They often do it day and night. The way they do it is they train to do it. When they get to critical times they often will push and not sleep for a long time. This is where the training comes in.

[pendragon]

When on the coast or in shipping lanes, sleep during the day with the AIS receiver on and keep watch during darkness .

[robertwcass]

Offshore out of the shipping lanes and in fair to good weather I have my tricolores on, radar and ais on with a 10 mile alarm zones set. I have my chart plotter on an iPad next to me so when I do wake up I can check my position, heading and speed and if all is well go back to sleep. This doesn’t work so well in squally or flukey wind conditions.

[Mark Johnson]

Originally Posted by DanielCZ

Hi Sailors,
I have a question, I did several times already heard of people, one of them being my instructor, who singlehanded with a full night of sleep. In case of my instructor, he had a customer who could not come, so the boat was paid, he had time and was sailing just for fun in the mediterranean sea, and at night he would just reef the sails, stop the boat and sleep, not being at anchor, not being close to land. Since then I hear a couple of similar stories, and I wonder, usually I hear single handed sailors have a routine of 20min sleep, wake up, check 20 min sleep. That is when they sail at night and depends on where they are.
Is anyone stoping the boat, reefing sails and sleeping? When on passage and not in hurry?

Any vessel at sea has a legal, ethical, and moral obligation to stand watch 24/7. If one can not do this, they need enough crew to do so, under all circumstances.
No one has the right to make a decision about how much risk is too much, for others... or to live life at the expense of others.

In poor visibility, in rough weather, while Sea sick and tired... the skippers of BOTH vessels are required, in order to avoid collisions.

[NaClyDog]

Originally Posted by Mark Johnson

Any vessel at sea has a legal, ethical, and moral obligation to stand watch 24/7. If one can not do this, they need enough crew to do so, under all circumstances.
No one has the right to make a decision about how much risk is too much, for others... or to live life at the expense of others.

In poor visibility, in rough weather, while Sea sick and tired... the skippers of BOTH vessels are required, in order to avoid collisions.

I think you need to notify the Vendee 2020 participants of this requirement.

[john manning]

My wife and I do this when sailing. We are aware of shipping lanes in our region and avoid those, so when offshore, every 3 or 4 days, we hove to and sleep for 4 - 6 hours.

[Tonali99]

Originally Posted by dbaoter

One comment, all this discussion on single handing at night. What about sleeping during the day. Have heard of boats being hitcduring the day. Scarcer during the night. Have to deal with the issue during daylight

Remember that those commercial frieghters have automated systems. Often there is no one observing. Hence collisions.
Have a marine radar detector. Alarm when painted by another boat.
*
I shorten sails and just go.

[StoneCrab]

Originally Posted by GILow

All other considerations aside, I really don't see the advantage of being hove-to while you sleep.

Mathematically there is no significant change in probability of being hit whether you are moving or stationary. You are still presenting the same sized target to a passing ship.

Instead you are simply increasing the period of exposure to the risk of collision. Quite significantly, up to 30% higher if you were to fail to progress each night.

There may be some fractionally small chance of running into an obstacle like a container or something that you might have seen if awake, but I'd say that risk is trivial in comparison to the increased risk from prolonging the journey.

I would think that the main benefit comes from not having to worry about weather during the night. If you shorten sail and basically configure for a storm, when the squalls come through, you're already configured for the bad weather.

[Redcoat]

My moving average was 4.9 knots in roughly 15000 miles. Now with a radar how much trouble do you think you can get in on autopilot in 4 hours. My boat makes noises. When a new noise comes up you will wake up.