Captain's Log
Captain's Log January 2006Night Watches
I will never forget my first night watch. We were sailing our Tartan 27 to Maine from southern New England and had passed the tall flasher at Boston Light just as the sun set. For the next few hours, as we sailed slowly northeast past Nahant, Marblehead and Gloucester, we picked up one lighthouse after the next and carefully marked each bearing as we ghosted by. I must have been 12 or so and the excitement of making a night journey kept me awake long after I was too tired to steer.
North of Cape Ann we sailed out into darkness where no shoreside lights sliced through the night. The moon was about half full so the wave tops glinted as they rolled by. In the cold water of the Gulf of Maine, phosphorescence streamed in our wake and seemed almost to rise to meet the Milky Way above us.
Sometime in the early hours of the morning we came up on the Isle of Shoals light and used its wheeling beam to mark our progress right through dawn. After sailing with only the moon and the stars as reference points, that lighthouse beacon was a real comfort in the cold predawn hours.
Watching the sun color the sky and then gradually bring light and warmth back to the world was in memory one of the prettiest and happiest sunrises I have ever seen, most likely because it was my first at sea.
Over the years I have come to prefer night watches, as long as we are far from busy shipping lanes and the weather is not too bad. Out in the cockpit keeping an eye on the horizon, sail trim and course it is easy to let the hours drift by. If it is a two-person watch, night stints are often times of great conversations. If I am alone, then music from the Walkman and the sounds and the feel of the boat make very pleasant companions.
If a ship comes over the horizon, as they do all too often, it is fun to watch the lights, take the bearings and decide if we need to alter course. Occasionally we will call a passing ship to see where they are heading and what they expect for weather. Most of the time the ships' crews do not answer our social calls. But occasionally one does. My favorite reply came from the skipper of a Soviet Union registered bulk cargo ship who had left home before the collapse of his country. I have no more country, he said. Where can I go home to? That is really being at sea, I thought.
For those new to night watches, there is always the uncertainty that darkness and unfamiliarity bring. The sea is already a challenge but to manage the boat, navigation and sail trim by braille seems at first to really raise the ante. And then it always seems that if something is going to break it is bound to do it at 2 a.m.
But once the crew are well established and the boat shaken down and comfortable at sea, night watches become the part of a day at sea with the best scenery the stars, planets and moon, the torpedo phosphorous of passing dolphin, the faint lights of a ship passing in the distance. And then there is always the promise toward the end of a passage that a lonely, solitary watch will be broken by that reassuring flicker of a lighthouse leading us on to a safe landfall. Night watches might be an acquired taste, but once you get it they can be addicting.
