August 13, 2016, at sea, 200 miles from Noumea
Can there be anything that says “I Love You” quite like keeping watch an extra hour so that your partner can get extra sleep? Thank you Cyndi!
We have about two days to go to get to New Caledonia. We’ve motored for the past 24 hours or so through a high pressure area with no wind. Now we’re sailing again in a nice, light breeze.
Warning: Ramble follows.
Watch Schedule on Legacy: We keep a six hours on, six hours off watch schedule. It works for us largely because we keep watch below decks, using radar and not sitting in the cold, exposed cockpit. Below, we can sit comfortably, out of the elements, read, work on the computer, snack or while away the time (read: waste) playing solitaire. Six hours off is a good amount of sleep (though not enough for some people onboard, thus the extra hour she gave me this morning).
“Wait, wait, you can’t keep a good watch below without scanning the horizon every x minutes!”
Oh, but we think you’re wrong. We would argue that we see more ships on radar than we ever would by watching the horizon. We see ships on radar that we can’t see when we go up and look for them, even though we know exactly where to look.
“I guess that’s OK, since you have AIS”
AIS, the international vessel tracking system, is a great idea and we wouldn’t be without it but it’s not perfect. Not all ships use AIS. Some don’t have it. Some turn it off so as not to give away their fishing activities. We run across quite a few ships here in the waters of the South Pacific that aren’t transmitting an AIS signal. We see them on radar.
“Doesn’t radar use too much power?”
Not ours. We have the Simrad 4G radar (same as B&G and Navico). It uses a different technology that only uses a fraction of the power of a conventional radar. We run it 24/7 while at sea, with a guard zone enabled. If a target enters the guard zone, an alarm sounds. It’s incredibly sensitive. We can see even tiny fishing boats or squalls way off in the
distance. That said, the display uses power as well. All told, radar and display, the draw is about 3 amps. A small price to pay to be able to sit inside and play solitaire!
I’d better get back to my game now. -Rich
Legal Notice: The above details a completely reckless and irrational way to sail. It is not our recommendation that anyone else do this. Please keep watch in the cockpit and freeze your tokus off (the posterior area of the upper leg – lower trunk junction), if for no other reason than tradition.
