What do single handlers do at night?

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by justwaiting

Interesting read relevant to this discussion.

https://maritimeaccident.org/2009/10...ang/#more-5368

Here's the whole accident report by the Australian Transport Safety Board which investigated the accident:


https://www.atsb.gov.au/media/1529060/mo2009008.pdf


"This incident clearly demonstrates the conundrum that exists between long distance solo-sailing and the legal requirements of the COLREGS. Since it was not possible for the yacht‟s skipper to keep a watch by sight and hearing at all times, it was not possible for her to comply with the COLREGS.


"The skipper was aware of this inconsistency. As a result, she had assessed the risks associated with not keeping a visual lookout at all times and had implemented a system that she believed would reduce the risks. This system required the fitment and effective use of navigational aids and an appropriate assessment of when it was safe to take a catnap. However, she was not meeting her obligation to keep a proper lookout at all times and was, at times, placing her safety in the hands of others and relying on them to maintain a proper lookout and give way to her vessel when necessary."


p. 27


That about sums it up!

[conachair]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

It depends on whether you think the law is important or not.

Nope. The boat always comes first. Legal systems are an unsuccessful attempt at creating objectivity in a subjective universe - keep digging eventually you can't get away from an arbitrary synthetic line in the sand delineating right from wrong.
So laws don't get a free ride without scrutiny, almost always it makes sense but not always.

Though saying all that, imho knowing well and complying with the irpcs is what you should do. It's simply the best way to not hit things and a very good chance that most other vessels will be doing the same, well out to sea away from the solent numpties anyway. Because overall it's the best thing to do, not because some law says so. 1 sentence is difficult for a single hander in rule 5.Imho well offshore sleeping with a loud radar watch alarm and ais alarm plus timer the risks of hitting another vessel are reduced to acceptably very low, likely lower than many crewed boats with head in a Kindle and no radar. Around the north & south Atlantic on ocean passages I can't remember seeing a single vessel which didn't show up on radar or ais first. Not much out there so limited data to go on, even so it is data which points to the systems working.

There are other risks much higher. Like hitting debris, no different in likely hood solo or crewed on a dark night. I live on a steel boat.

Jessica watson is indeed a good example, she balls up basically. Didn't see a vessel 1nm away either on radar or visual. Then went for a snooze. Can't do that solo. The game needs to be set much higher than that.

All this does put a lot of emphasis on having systems which are solid and reliable, another area where a well set up solo boat will be in better shape than many cruising boats.
Not all solo boats or skippers are like that though .....

[skenn_ie]

Laws should not be imposed for their own sake. They provide a toolbox by which the public interest is served, or in the case of COLREGS, by which the interests of safety is served. None of them should be implemented in such a way as to be overly intrusive on the individual.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by conachair

Nope. The boat always comes first. Legal systems are an unsuccessful attempt at creating objectivity in a subjective universe - keep digging eventually you can't get away from an arbitrary synthetic line in the sand delineating right from wrong.
So laws don't get a free ride without scrutiny, almost always it makes sense but not always.

Though saying all that, imho knowing well and complying with the irpcs is what you should do. It's simply the best way to not hit things and a very good chance that most other vessels will be doing the same, well out to sea away from the solent numpties anyway. Because overall it's the best thing to do, not because some law says so. 1 sentence is difficult for a single hander in rule 5.Imho well offshore sleeping with a loud radar watch alarm and ais alarm plus timer the risks of hitting another vessel are reduced to acceptably very low, likely lower than many crewed boats with head in a Kindle and no radar. Around the north & south Atlantic on ocean passages I can't remember seeing a single vessel which didn't show up on radar or ais first. Not much out there so limited data to go on, even so it is data which points to the systems working.

There are other risks much higher. Like hitting debris, no different in likely hood solo or crewed on a dark night. I live on a steel boat.

Jessica watson is indeed a good example, she balls up basically. Didn't see a vessel 1nm away either on radar or visual. Then went for a snooze. Can't do that solo. The game needs to be set much higher than that.

All this does put a lot of emphasis on having systems which are solid and reliable, another area where a well set up solo boat will be in better shape than many cruising boats.
Not all solo boats or skippers are like that though .....

I don't really understand what you're saying here.


If you mean that there are things to think about besides the legal implications of it, then obviously, this is true. The law is only one part of the picture.



If on the other hand you mean that we can decide we don't think too much of the law and characterize it some florid way and close our eyes and say "na na na na na", then I can't agree with it. The law is FORCE. It is the embodiment of sovereignty. You can't get away from it. The law decides whether you get to keep your own property, and even whether you get to keep your own freedom. Property is a legal construct; you have a relationship with it only to the extent that the law sees fit. In nations which practice capital punishment even your life is subject to legal forfeiture. Fork with the law at your peril.

[Stu Jackson]

Originally Posted by longjonsilver

87 pages? Is it a lot of fighting? How can there really be 87 pages of useful information? i don't come on the forum for a social life, i come on this forum for information - oftentimes i find info that i didn't even know i needed. Like CPA for instance

jon

jon,


I did say it was long, didn't I?


A lot of the back and forth was from one particular respondent who was being deliberately obtuse.


But the most interesting thing I learned was the MAJOR difference when other vessels are moving more than 4X YOUR speed.


I'd sailed on SF Bay from 1978 to 2016, amidst containership traffic. But they were doing 10-14 knots.


Once I moved to BC with the fast ferries, which get up to 20 knots very quickly after leaving the terminal at Swartz Bay, I learned a LOT from that link. And I actually tried it out, and included my experience in that thread.



I think it's worth a bit of time to read through it, to learn something that may be new to you.


Your boat, your choice.

[conachair]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

You can't get away from it..

Yes you can. Don't get caught
The first few lines i think i was trying to say there should be no default respect for any legal system, if it makes sense as most do then fine. Otherwise you are living in a dictatorship with no chance to question the rule makers.
Back to sailing, on a well equipped and well run solo boat it should be irrelevant imho, it's possible to get the risk very low, the universe runs on probabilities so zero risk is impossible, but offshore very low is possible. And sometimes you just won't get much sleep for a while.

[earthbm]

I generally agree that not being able to sleep while under way limits our option severely. But just for sheets and giggles, here’s a Marine Traffic screenshot:


I suspect the boat icons are not to scale

[conachair]

Originally Posted by earthbm

I generally agree that not being able to sleep while under way limits our option severely. But just for sheets and giggles, here’s a Marine Traffic screenshot:
Attachment 201887

I suspect the boat icons are not to scale

Bit of a runaround but it is possible to convert marine traffic density maps into opencpn charts, useful and interesting for any vessels.

[jmorrison146]

"There is no horse so dead that it cannot be beaten one more time."

[dick sargent]

Wonder what the sea-lawyers think about red over red...the captain's dead light signal. Deck lights too. Sleep tight.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by dick sargent

Wonder what the sea-lawyers think about red over red...the captain's dead light signal. Deck lights too. Sleep tight.

This old sea lawyer is on record about that.


Not strictly legal, because NUC according to the letter of the law is justified by some "exceptional circumstance", not by the banal and non-exceptional necessity of sleeping. But if you're single handed and days from any harbor and have no choice but to sleep --


That's in my opinion the most seamanlike way to do it. Hove to of course. It communicates honestly to other mariners that the "captain's dead", i.e., no one is at the helm, and no manuevering will take place. In other words, you're flotsam like a deadhead or a floating container, to be treated as such.

[conachair]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

This old sea lawyer is on record about that.


Not strictly legal, because NUC according to the letter of the law is justified by some "exceptional circumstance", not by the banal and non-exceptional necessity of sleeping. But if you're single handed and days from any harbor and have no choice but to sleep --


That's in my opinion the most seamanlike way to do it. Hove to of course. It communicates honestly to other mariners that the "captain's dead", i.e., no one is at the helm, and no manuevering will take place. In other words, you're flotsam like a deadhead or a floating container, to be treated as such.

Completely disagree from being out there. Lights don't come into it, any avoidance has been done long before you'll pick up any lights. Heaving to for a snooze achieves nothing apart from extending the passage time. Not quite nothing, from occasional vhf chats I'll get picked up 15 plus Nm away and any dogleg required to give more sea room will happen more than 5nm away, at least the very few occasions when it has happened. Business as usual for the other guy, radar target moving fairly consistent course at 5/6kts. Prob yacht. Stationary target what would he think? Dunno. If he's within 5 nm the alarms go off and I'm up. So what does heaving to achieve? No one will see your lights. Ths captain isn't dead. He knows. The alarms work.

[Cpt Pat]

Originally Posted by conachair

Nope. The boat always comes first. Legal systems are an unsuccessful attempt at creating objectivity in a subjective universe - keep digging eventually you can't get away from an arbitrary synthetic line in the sand delineating right from wrong.
So laws don't get a free ride without scrutiny, almost always it makes sense but not always.

Though saying all that, imho knowing well and complying with the irpcs is what you should do. It's simply the best way to not hit things and a very good chance that most other vessels will be doing the same, well out to sea away from the solent numpties anyway. Because overall it's the best thing to do, not because some law says so. 1 sentence is difficult for a single hander in rule 5.Imho well offshore sleeping with a loud radar watch alarm and ais alarm plus timer the risks of hitting another vessel are reduced to acceptably very low, likely lower than many crewed boats with head in a Kindle and no radar. Around the north & south Atlantic on ocean passages I can't remember seeing a single vessel which didn't show up on radar or ais first. Not much out there so limited data to go on, even so it is data which points to the systems working.

There are other risks much higher. Like hitting debris, no different in likely hood solo or crewed on a dark night. I live on a steel boat.

Jessica watson is indeed a good example, she balls up basically. Didn't see a vessel 1nm away either on radar or visual. Then went for a snooze. Can't do that solo. The game needs to be set much higher than that.

All this does put a lot of emphasis on having systems which are solid and reliable, another area where a well set up solo boat will be in better shape than many cruising boats.
Not all solo boats or skippers are like that though .....

Right on!

I don't know how a thread titled: "What do single handlers do at night?" somehow drifted into a tiresome discussion on law. I suspecct we lost most of our audience, except the armchair lawyers, once the discussion departed from the practical.

Have good radar.
Have good AIS.
Set alarms.
Go to sleep.
Big ocean, little boat.

And be honest: out in the deep blue, how much time do you really spend intently looking for traffic visually? I'd be surprised if the answer was more than an aggregate hour per day. Are you "keeping a watch" the other 23 hours? Yes! If you are able to respond to a traffic conflict. Initialy awake or initially asleep.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by conachair

Completely disagree from being out there. Lights don't come into it, any avoidance has been done long before you'll pick up any lights. Heaving to for a snooze achieves nothing apart from extending the passage time. Not quite nothing, from occasional vhf chats I'll get picked up 15 plus Nm away and any dogleg required to give more sea room will happen more than 5nm away, at least the very few occasions when it has happened. Business as usual for the other guy, radar target moving fairly consistent course at 5/6kts. Prob yacht. Stationary target what would he think? Dunno. If he's within 5 nm the alarms go off and I'm up. So what does heaving to achieve? No one will see your lights. Ths captain isn't dead. He knows. The alarms work.

I didn't say it was the only seamanlike way to do it. If it were me, I might well choose to carry on, depending on the risk of encountering traffic while I'm asleep.


But you are not correct to say that heaving to "achieves nothing". It achieves a whole lot. What exactly? (1) It greatly simplifies collision avoidance for the vessel which encounters you, and thus reduces the risk. The geometry is a lot simpler with a stationary object. (2) It unmistakably conveys the information that you are not going to maneuver -- you are not going to play your part in the collision avoidance process. Being underway, on the contrary, creates the presumption, which could be fatal, that you are doing what you are supposed to be doing while underway; i.e. that someone is alert and driving the ship and the captain is not dead. (3) It is in harmony with NUC status which you are showing. On the downside, you extend the passage and increase the amount of time you are exposed to risks of collision. But it is still much, much safer and I think it's the right thing to do if you can't put yourself in a place where there is virtually no chance of encountering traffic while you are sleeping.


I also disagree strongly that nav lights are meaningless. On the contrary, nav lights are a crucial part of practical collision avoidance at night. Ask any professional. And see my story below. Far from every potential collision is resolved before lights are visible, contrary to what you say.


As to reliance on electronic aids -- radar guard zones and AIS alarms are extraordinarily useful to enhance watchkeeping offshore even if you're awake, even if you are fully crewed. But they are not infallible. Jessica Watson's plan was to rely on radar guard zones and AIS alarms while sleeping; and they failed her (and she blamed them, an unseamanlike gesture on her part).



Did you read the official accident report? I highly recommend it. Jessica was sleeping while underway and in an area with traffic, relying on radar and AIS to wake her up. She was waking up frequently and looking at her instruments but she failed to make an effective assessment of the situation, although the ship which hit her (apparently 5 minutes after she looked at her radar) would have been an extremely prominent target on her screen. So everything she was doing failed, and she got run down by a ship. She is extremely lucky that it was a glancing blow and only cost her her mast. She is extremely lucky to be alive. All single handers should take note.




I've experienced this kind of failure myself, just last year. I was off the coast of NE Scotland towards the end of a 4 day passage from Torshavn in the Faroe Islands to East Anglia. Crew of 3, so basically 3 single handers with one person driving the boat nearly all the time, but 4 hours at a time. It was in the middle of the graveyard shift which I always take, 02:00-06:00, otherwise known as o-dark-hundred. I was awake and alert but just about jumped out of my skin when the VHF crackled with a fishing vessel hailing me and asking me to turn on some lights so he could see me. He couldn't see my tricolor at all (another lesson), and was on a collision course; he saw me only because he was more alert than I was, and saw me on his AIS receiver.



There he was on my radar screen just a few cables away, on a collision course.


How did he get through my double radar guard zones? In calm weather? With my B&G 4G radar, which has awesome guard zones? I have no idea, but he did. And although I was awake and looking out, I didn't see his nav lights nor did I hear him (and I was under sail).



That could have easily ended in the deaths of 3 or 4 people. Imagine how much greater the risk, if you're not even awake. Thank God the fisherman wasn't sleeping.

[Cpt Pat]

Originally Posted by conachair

Jessica watson is indeed a good example, she balls up basically. Didn't see a vessel 1nm away either on radar or visual. Then went for a snooze. Can't do that solo. The game needs to be set much higher than that.

From what I've read, Ms. Watson was trying to exist on an intermittent sleep schedule, i.e., short naps with no sustained sleep periods of 6 hours or more. A few days of that regimen, and she would have been severely and chronically sleep deprived. A barge carrying a mariachi band could have passed by close aboard and she may not have seen or heard it. Given enough fatigue, the brain goes numb and signals "more of the same" without recognizing a break in the grandiose monotony of the sea. In my estimation, she was a victim of a destructive maritime myth: that a person can function for days without uninterrupted sleep. And research has shown that this vulnerability is most severe for young people. Ms. Watson was in her teens.

Unlike aviation accidents where the investigators delve deeply into the amount of sleep the crew had prior to an accident, maritime accident investigations rarely look into this factor, else we'd know as well as pilots about the dangers of not getting enough sleep. Here's an FAA Advisory Circular on the topic of crew fatigue: https://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/...%20120-100.pdf. And in the case of pilots, we are only considering duties that last hours, not days or weeks. When's the last time you saw such an advisory from maritime authorities?

We've discussed hallucinations here. Sleep deprivation induced hallucinations aren't just seeing and hearing things that aren't there -- they are also not seeing and hearing things that are.

My personal advice is: if you can't devise a strategy for getting 6 hours of uninterrupted sleep after you have been out for more than 24 hours: don't go. For coastal cruising, the strategy that works best is to take a route far offshore that avoids high-traffic areas.

Single-handed sailing is not outlawed, and the reality of it is that skippers must sleep. It seems some people may have difficulty with the legal ambiguity of having to safely operate their vessels while maintaining mental alertness. Life is full of ambiguities. That's where good judgement comes in.