01-05-2000
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Contributing Authors
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Join Date: Jan 2000
Posts: 68
Rep Power: 9
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Vital Statistics - Watchkeeping survey summary
More Experienced Couples
From 8 couples surveyed - couples who have sailed at least 5,000 offshore miles without additional crew.
| DAYTIME WATCHKEEPING |
| Couples that have a watch keeping schedule in place during the day: |
1 |
| The number of couples that have no watch keeping schedule during the day, but someone on deck at all times: | 7 |
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| NIGHT TIME WATCHKEEPING |
| Couples that have a watch keeping schedule in place: |
8 |
| Couples that have a rigid watch, or watches that change at a specific time: | 2 |
Couples that have a flexible watch schedule, or a watch with general hours
agreed on, but with the on-watch waking the off-watch when needing to be relieved: | 6 |
Couples who rotate watches over the course of a passage to vary who gets
the dog watch: | 6 |
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| AVERAGE LENGTH OF WATCH |
| Less than 4 hours: | 1 |
| About 4 hours: | 4 |
| More than 4 hours: | 3 |
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A Typical Watch Schedule | | | |
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Less Experienced Couples:
From 5 couples surveyed - couples who have completed one or two offshore passages of five days or more without additional crew.
| DAYTIME WATCHKEEPING |
| Couples that have a watch keeping schedule in place during the day: |
3 |
| The number of couples that have no watch keeping schedule during the day, but someone on deck at all times: | 2 |
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| NIGHT TIME WATCHKEEPING |
| Couples that have a watch keeping schedule in place: |
5 |
| Couples that have a rigid watch, or watches that change at a specific time: | 5 |
Couples that have a flexible watch schedule, or a watch with general hours
agreed on, but with the on-watch waking the off-watch when needing to be
relieved: | 0 |
Couples who rotate watches over the course of a passage to vary who gets
the dog watch: | 5 |
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| AVERAGE LENGTH OF WATCH |
| Less than 4 hours: |
4 |
| About 4 hours: | 1 |
| More than 4 hours: | 0 |
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One of the reasons we keep watch - a sudden squall on our way to Bermuda which required us to reef.
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Conclusions: Daytime watch keeping
becomes less formal as couples learn to work together, keeping someone on deck
at all times without a specific watch schedule.
As couples gain experience, watch
schedules tend to become less rigid. They modify their watch schedules to their
individual sleep patterns and allow the on-watch more flexibility in determining
when to change the watch. More experienced couples tend toward longer watches.
Most of the experienced couples started out with two-hour watches until they
gained confidence. Then watches lengthened to sometimes
five or six hours, or even more.
The two experienced couples with
the shortest watches faced more challenging conditions that the rest: one sailed
regularly in the cold weather of higher latitudes, and the other sailed a fifty-foot,
lightweight, high-performance boat which required more attention than a typical
cruising boat. |
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