A day in the life at sea for the Margaritas

Neill- I have the 3-6 am watch, it is not pretty. I hopefully got a sound sleep from 12-3 and getting up at 3 is a bit of a struggle. I normally start with criticizing Sarah for something about her watch. This is standard watch change procedure: "Feels like we are slogging. What sails do you have up?" or "We sure are pounding, what sails do you have up?" S does a last look around and log entry and plots our position. I review it and have my first look around. This can be very boring or very sobering: "Three ships on the radar, the two big ones have passed us already, I haven't figured out the little one yet. Have a good watch." It is a time for reading or if I am into an exciting project, doing some dosimetry. I listen to the BBC or play some intense computer game to keep me perky. I use my watch alarm to make sure I have a look around at least every 15 minutes. This is a controversial issue. We feel that a definite look at least every 15 minutes with the interim spent down below is better than staying up top where you can easily space out if you don't use a timer. During the look, I go up the main hatch unless it is snotty out and then I use the aft hatch, under the protection of our dodger. I check for lights (ships or shore) and make sure that Athena is happy. Sometimes the visibility is so bad that the look around is pretty useless, but we do it anyway. We also keep the radar going at night, which can spot big ships at up to 20 miles, and yachts at about 2. We keep sail changes to a minimum at night. It means getting a harness and life jacket on and isn't fun alone. So our overnight progress is sometimes a bit slow. As the pre-dawn sun lights things up I try to put up what we should have up, or will hear it from Douglas and Sarah. Then Sarah takes over the watch at 6 and lets me sleep a full 4 hours from 6-10 am. This is the longest stretch of sleep but not the best. There are noisy crewmembers making their breakfast just feet from the sea berth (on a passage Sarah and I "hot bunk" it in the main cabin -- don't get carried away, it just means we take turns in the same bunk-- as our normal berth is too bouncy.) And normally Sarah makes a radio contact 8:30 or so with a couple of friends. These are very important on a passage, for security and entertainment. I officially get up at about 10, ravenously hungry, having only eaten a sandwich a few crackers and a (sometimes no so-)small pile of cookies overnight, and tuck into breakfast. As the kids are doing the daytime watches, I get to putter around doing boat or dosimetry work, play guitar or read till Sarah gets up around 1 PM and we can finally make noise (eat) again.

Bronwen- I typically wake up at around 8:30 often getting up just in time for a radio conversation with friends. If the weather is rough I usually get up and then end up right back in bed again. I can't read or do school, and in those sorts of conditions uptop is often wet. Rough days always feel like a waste: you spend the whole time waiting for it too calm down, trying to read and then ending up feeling sick again, and lying down listening to tapes. The boat is being bashed around, progress is normally not great, salty spray is covering the boat, and no one feels like doing anything, whether it is school or just making food. In really rough weather we have to shut even the protected aft hatch, so the boat gets very hot and stuffy and there is very little exchange of air. Water also starts to seep in through our various small leaks. Taking aboard water, even in small quantities, is one of the best ways to start you feeling miserable and demoralized. Things become wet and salty and clammy, and you start to wonder if you will ever get things clean and dry again. In rough weather you start to notice the way that everything you do is synchronized with the boat, be it moving about the cabin, drinking water, opening drawers, or sometimes even eating. In good weather, which we once classified as weather in which there is no spray in the cockpit, we are able to open the hatches and sit uptop. We are able to carry on life pretty much as usual, able to cook, do school, play music, whatever. I have breakfast and then get my school out of the cupboard over my sleeping parent, who ever is in bed. In the 2001-2002 school year I am only doing one half of a year, so my subjects are precalculus, French 3, and Computer Technology. Math is the most time-consuming, but the explanations are good and I am allowed to go at my own pace, so none of the subjects are particularly challenging. I spends most of the day doing school, with interruptions to steer the boat if there is no wind, or to take watch. Watch usually consists of checking the course, conditions, and looking for other boats every fifteen minutes.

Douglas: I wake up at 6 or 6:30 to take the watch until 9 or so. It is often calm early in the morning, so I generally have to motor, which involves sitting in the cockpit and steering (our windvane doesn't operate in light air). I try to start school at 9, after a breakfast of toast or oatmeal. For school I have Spanish 2, Geometry, and Biology 2. Not a very heavy schedule, but it normally takes me 3 1/2 to 4 hours to complete it. If it is rough out, I sometimes don't do any school, or just do a subject or two. If it is too rough to do school, I lie on my bunk with the lee cloth up (a piece of canvas that can be rigged to prevent people from rolling off the bunk) and listen to music (I like Bach and Mozart) or just think groggily.

Emma I usually wake up at seven or eight AM, but stay in bed for another hour because I have nowhere to sit to do school until Bronwen gets up and gives me some of her bed. (I can't sit up in my own bed, and someone is usually asleep in the main cabin.) Sometimes I go up to the cockpit to read and eat breakfast until Bronwen is up. This usually happens at eight-thirty or nine, whereupon I get my school out and start working. Since I'm way behind schedule, I usually do three lessons per day, but since school is fairly easy for me I still finish at a decent hour. In 2001-2002 I do sixth grade: math, science, ancient history, Asian and African geography, reading (an assortment of books, including poetry by Emily Dickinson and Langston Hughes, Anne of Green Gables and The Phantom Tollbooth), grammar and composition. Math and science are an assortment of different areas. History and English are my favorite subjects. Usually passages aren't the best conditions to do school, since it's rather cramped sharing a bed with Bronwen, I'm usually seasick at the beginning of passages, and it's stuffy. When we are motoring—which is quite common—I take turns doing hour steering sessions, so school is frequently interrupted and I get done later in the day. In rough weather, when I don't do school, I lie in my bunk usually and read or listen to tapes, which gets pretty boring when I do it all morning or even all day.

Sarah I have the 12-3AM watch. This is hard to wake up from, but once out of the sea berth (which is one of the couches in the main salon with a lee cloth up) it is OK. After checking the charts and doing a boat check I settle down for 15 minute intervals of reading or listening to BBC on shortwave radio. Sometimes this watch crawls by a a snails pace, especially if it has been rough weather and I am sleep deprived. That bunk is soooo good to get back into at 3 AM. The next watch is my favourite, especially since Douglas has started taking over most of it. The sun is already up, or nearly rising, depending on where in the world we are, and it is a peaceful time of day. Some times there are some early morning dolphins to watch from the bow. Once Douglas takes over I listen to the radio nets, get weather reports, and sometimes check in. At around 10 I sack out for another nap.

Afternoon

Neill - I eat (no surprise there) and then play (guitar or read or talk) or work till a well deserved nap at about 3 pm. I get back up at 5 and either cook, or on alternate night, play music, reads or bothers children. This is a great time of day. It is cooler, there is nothing big to do and we are all pretty well rested.

Bronwen- I wrap up my day of school somewhere between 2 and 6 o'clock (or should I say 1400 and 1800) and then read, try to catch up in my journal, play the clarinet, or help to cook dinner (the kids take turns helping). If it is rough I often read in bed. At sea we normally eat dinner just before sundown so that we can eat in the cockpit. Underway, the main cabin is usually stuffy, humid, and messy, not a good place to be. Half of the main cabin has also been converted to the parents' bunk and covered with sheets. So, we eat up top. Much of the time, especially in thermal areas, the wind will peak in the mid-afternoon and calm down in the evenings. Conditions are often gentle and the heat of the day has gone, so this is the good time of day to be up top.

Douglas: I finish school at 2 generally, but sometimes later and sometimes earlier. I eat lunch at 1, or whenever Mum wakes up from her nap (so I don't wake her up by making a racket in the galley). If it is rough, lunch is generally crackers, but if not I have mi goreng (Indonesian fried noodles) or grilled cheese or something. I take another watch at 1200, and then another at 1500, and occasionally one more at 1800. Generally I get to sail for the afternoon watches, so it is not very tough. I play the harmonica, and if it is very calm I play the keyboard or the clarinet. I read a lot as well, often more than 200 pages per day, which runs through the books (that is why book swaps are so popular among cruisers). Dinner in calm weather is the highlight of the day. We watch hungrily as whoever cooks, then we all eat in the cockpit (unless this is impractical).

Douglas At night time, I sleep. Whenever I wake up in the night I check to make sure that the person on watch hasn't fallen overboard. On the first night out on rough passages I hardly get any sleep, but towards the end i hardly wake up.

Emma I usually finish doing school at eleven or twelve, sometimes earlier. Afterwards I do a lot of reading and writing in my journal. Since the wind picks up in the afternoon I don't usually do any steering then; sometimes I brave the dark and messiness of down below and type on the computer. The best time on passages is late afternoon and evening, when it gets cooler and the light softer. Then I sit in the cockpit and read or listen to music, unless I'm helping with dinner. There's a brief noisy period, around this time, when whoever was sleeping is awake and dinner's being cooked. We almost always eat dinner in the cockpit, except when there are waves coming into it; then we all eat wherever we can, whether on the floor or settees in the main cabin or on our bunks.

Sarah After lunch is quiet time again - as Neill is sleeping. Sometimes there is school review to do with one of the kids, otherwise the awake members talk or read in the cockpit, or mess around with sails. Late afternoon is the best time - everyone is awake, the day has cooled off, and it is our favourite time in the tropics, when the lighting is beautiful. On rare gentle passages some of us even take a book up onto the foredeck to read, or do some mild exercises up there, looking into the setting sun. We often reef down before evening if the wind is frisky, to make cooking and the night time watches easier. We get the tunes on, the food smells good, and we are that much closer to an anchorage. Passages are really OK if the weather is reasonable. After three days proper sleep patterns develop and we get enough rest. Mostly it is peaceful, with some interspersed excitement caused by bad weather, equipment failures or breakages, or catching a fish. The best thing about passages though without a doubt is putting the anchor down at the end.

Night time

Neill - After dinner, the gang and I sit in the cockpit and chat for a bit. Sometimes listening to radio programs (recorded NPR tapes or old 1940's radio programs - great fun). Bronwen and I have the 8pm to midnight watch so we get organized and make sure all is well. We make sure we are not over-canvassed, putting one or two reefs in the main and seeing if the jib wants a bit of a reef as well. If there is no moon, it is a bit spooky at first. No lights up in the cockpit and the sea makes lots of noises, especially if it is in a frisky mood. By 8, Sarah has gone to bed and D and E are quietly reading, getting ready for bed. I get a full 2 hours of uninterrupted time, while B has the watch. I normally do some work then or read. This works in all but the roughest seas. From 10-midnight I am on my own. Just Neill and Margarita, gliding along. Or sometimes leaping and bashing along, or rolling ear to ear along. In the latter cases, there are noisy jars and pots and pans to hunt down and silence with rolls of toilet paper or other jars etc. The night time routine has established itself and this is a pretty good time. If there is not enough wind for Athena to steer, then it is Walkman time at the wheel. Not too bad if it isn't cold, as the weather is calm and you can study the sky. At midnight Sarah is woken, given a report on any ships or fishing boats and N gets to sleep for 3 hours. And we start over again.

Bronwen I usually spend the after-dinner time either writing in my journal or sitting up top. I begin a two-hour watch at 8:00 (2000), during which I write in my journal or read. By ten I am usually very tired, believe it or not, and am ready for bed. If we have been sailing with thermals the wind usually dies at some time during this watch, so I end up steering. Steering brings on sleepiness very quickly, and I often find that the book on tape that I have been listening to starts to make no sense at all, so I am glad to go to bed.

Emma After dinner we relax in the cockpit for a while longer, usually listening to Sherlock Holmes tapes as a family. When it gets dark we all go down below; the parent who isn't doing watch goes to bed and Douglas usually follows soon. The wind dies down at night in the thermals, so Bronwen, on watch, usually steers and I have her bunk to myself. (This may not make sense, but it's how it happens.) I usually take advantage of this and get out one of my bins full of books and see what ones I haven't read recently. I go to bed around nine-thirty, shortly before Bronwen gets off watch, and read for about fifteen minutes more before going to sleep.

Revised: 06/19/02.

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A day in the life at sea for the Margaritas

Morning

Afternoon

Night time

Morning

Afternoon

Night time

Revised: 06/19/02.