On Fri, 9 Jul 2010 19:44:54 -0400, you wrote: >Everyone has a watch schedule which works for them, not necessarily well for >others. > >Our practice is that one stands watch until unable/needy. If the other is >sleeping, watch stander wakes the other after making a pot of coffee, and >immediately on relief, goes below, brushes their teeth and gets into bed >(presumed needed because asking for relief). > >Sleep until unable or until called. If you're no longer sleeping, come see >if watch stander needs relief. If not, joint activity/shared watch ensues, >and current stander goes to sleep as soon as possible (for sleep). Rinse, >repeat on the above.
My plan which works reasonably well is not to do a trip of more than about 24-36 hours offshore. Bob wants to go more than that, but given our ages and state of health and fitness, I refuse to do more extensive offshore unless we have a third person to help stand the watches and he refuses to have a third person on board. So we (mostly it is me who does the planning) limit ourselves to short hops. Bob is 74 and has had a heart attack. He's not as strong or as fit as he was 12 years ago when we bought our boat. I'm 72 and have various maladies of age including osteo arthritis, bouts of vertigo, nerve damage from shingles and due to a recent bout of bronchitis I have less than 50% lung function. I am obviously not strong or fit and last year after the bronchitis, it was as much as I could do to walk the length of the dock and get on the boat. The only sail I could raise or lower on my own is the staysail although for the last 3 or 4 years I have been doing strength training and Pilates at the gym. Currently and for the last 5 years we only sail in the Chesapeake where we can anchor every night. When we were doing the ICW, we would go offshore from Charleston SC to Amelia Island FL and then since we had to go around the Julia Tuttle bridge in Miami anyway, we would go offshore from Ft. Pierce to Miami. We would usually start early in the morning to get most of the sailing done in daylight, and both of us would be up, although I would sleep during the day, as I am more able to sleep on demand than Bob is. After dinner, I would let Bob continue until I felt he was getting tired (at his regular bedtime), and I would suggest he go below and take a nap. I wouldn't call him back unless I needed to have the sails reset or something. One reason why I feel that we need someone with us is that he doesn't really sleep. At every unusual motion or noise he will have to know what is happening. (Unlike when we are at anchor, which I do the anchor watch while he sleeps.) So my worry is that he will overextend himself and will not be able to make good decisions because of lack of sleep. This is our compromise. He keeps threatening to go off and singlehand, but I hope he does not carry out this threat, which he has been making since 1997. _______________________________________________ Liveaboard mailing list [email protected] To adjust your membership settings over the web http://liveaboardonline.com/mailman/listinfo/liveaboard To subscribe send an email to [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] The archives are at http://www.liveaboardonline.com/pipermail/liveaboard/ To search the archives http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] The Mailman Users Guide can be found here http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/mailman-member/index.html
