Night Watches and Religious Experiences

[hoops name=”break”]April 29, 2013

We’ve now been underway almost 48 hours on route to Raroia in the Tuamotos.   The passage thus far has been fine, with no serious issues and not much of anything to report.  Rather boring, I guess, but in this world, boring can be a very, very good thing!  Weather has just been okay…. Winds in the 10-20 knot range most of the way, rather beamy seas, running anywhere from 3-5 to 6-8 feet, and squalls overnight last night for most of the night.   It’s a little after 10pm, and I’ve just come on to my watch.  We are on a course of 185°, almost due south, and in fact, the Southern Cross leads the way off our bow, seemingly pulling us closer to her, while the Big Dipper watches our stern disappear further into the Southern Hemisphere.

With Les and Rose gone, John and I are back to our usual watch schedule of 4 hours on and 4 hours off.  Nighttime watches are strictly observed, while our daytime watches are more relaxed.  Thus, this finds me here in the pilothouse, moon risen and aglow in the waters off our portside.  Night watches…..Love ‘em or hate ‘em, they’re an essential part of life aboard for any passagemaking vessel.  Personally, I find night watches to be a bit of a religious experience……

No, really….I’m serious here.  Let me explain…..

In general, the night watch religious experiences come in two profound flavors:

Number 1) The sea is a reflective mirror of undulating velvet, the moon and stars reveal themselves in all their glory, the Host of Angels sing, and your heart practically bursts with indescribable joy and emotion.  Envision this….The rest of the crew is asleep and you are deliciously alone in the pilothouse, with just the purr of the engine and the sound of waves lapping gently at the hull of your boat.  It is a full moon and the moonlight glitters and glances off the water like so many diamonds.  The Big Dipper and the Southern Cross hang in opposite sides of the sky, parenthesis to the billions of twinkling stars spilt from a Cosmic salt shaker in between.  You notice a small pod of dolphins riding the bow and side wakes of your boat, looking for all the world like rushing torpedoes in the glowing phosphorescence…..You can hear them breathe as they surface but then quickly return to their play.   All is Right with the World and you are One with the Universe, knowing and understanding all its Wondrous Mysteries……Welcome to Heaven……

And,

Number 2) The wind is howling, the seas are raging, the moon and stars are absent, eaten by angry black clouds and sky, and you are desperately praying for your watch to please be over soon, please Lord!  Now, imagine this…..The rest of the crew is asleep and you are alone in the pilothouse – decidedly alone.  They have all taken to their beds to try and get some rest after a very trying day, when even just walking around the boat was an effort.  There is no moon and no stars.  All you see out the pilothouse windows is blackness.  But, you can hear very well the slap of the waves as they bash the hull in a random, confused pattern, which has been the wave sets for most of the day.  The wind howls at 25 to 35 knots, and you can glimpse the white caps as they pass under the running lights and move off into the darkness beyond.  You’d get up to get a cup of coffee, but the effort to move is just too much.  Just for fun, let’s throw in a squall, winds gusting to 45 knots, complete with thunder and lightning.  Screw the Universe and curse Nature…..You just want to lay down in your bed and escape the agony until it’s over.  Welcome to Hell….

Religious experience…..See what I mean??

Of course, not all night watches are the extreme that my examples portray, but John and I have experienced both of the above, and more than once or twice, too.  And, most importantly, almost all the rest fall someplace in between the two.

Tonight, for example, there’s no phosphorescence and no dolphins, the moon is up in the sky, illuminating the wave pattern, as well as the dark line of a squall 4 miles off our port bow.  Moving around the cabin is not too much effort, but effort nonetheless as the sea is on our beam and rolls us regularly starboard to port and back.  As I mentioned earlier, we have our beloved constellations in the sky to guide us and ponder upon.  The radar blips the squall, but not another vessel has been on it since we left Nuku Hiva.  LIG….

Some time ago, Judy asked what we “watch” for on a night watch, and I commented that mostly it’s about things that go bump in the night.  Which is true….Ships, especially in areas where there’s lots of ship traffic, are a major concern, and we make it a point to stay well out of their way, since the rule of tonnage always wins, regardless of who has the right of way!  Out here though, shipping is not so much a problem as perhaps other cruising boats.  We were talking to another cruising boat the other day (sailing vessel) and they mentioned that they just reef their sails and go to bed if they get tired.  We were aghast…..And all the more reason for us to have to be more vigilant.

Also, in this area of the Tuamotos, we have to worry whether or not our charts are accurate.  The Tuamotos are low lying atolls, their fringing reefs only giving off a radar reflection anywhere from 3 to 8 miles out.  GPS and electronic charting have made them considerably less dangerous than they were in days past, but we still keep a watch to make sure we don’t inadvertently run up aground over an atoll during the night.  Don’t laugh…..It’s happened…..

And then, of course, there’s the other hard stuff to run into…..the container that’s fallen off a ship floating just at the surface of the water (less likely in this area), the sperm whale sleeping at the surface of the water (more likely in this area), the cruising vessel, whether single-handed or fully crewed, with no watch (sheesh, who knows how likely – just amazes me!).

But watches are not only about what’s outside the boat.  It’s equally important what’s happening inside the boat.  When on watch, and especially during the night when there’s only one of us awake, we watch the gauges for the engine, particularly temperature, voltage, oil pressure, and RPM’s….. We watch our route on our chartplotter to make sure our autopilot doesn’t stray from its course……We watch our bilge light indicators to make sure that they are not going off from some unknown leak, or if we have a known leak (say, for example, a stabilizer seal) we watch to make sure the bilge pump is going off and time it to make sure it’s not going off more frequently than it should.    And we listen…..Listen to the pitch of the engine and any change in it….Listen for any strange noise that’s not immediately identifiable as a usual boat noise or water striking the hull……Listen for any alarms which may go off, signaling an unexpected problem somewhere not immediately visible.  So there you have it….So simple yet so critical…..

And on a personal note, most times on night watches, I pray. (Religious experience, remember?  🙂 ) Oh not a formal prayer on bended knee or anything like that, I mean after all, I’m a good Baptist girl gone bad…..But more like a conversation with God, if you know what I mean.  On those nights when it’s heaven, I breathe prayers of thanks and gratitude for the beauty and His blessings and grace…..On those nights when it’s hell, I pray desperately for the Faith and strength to get through it (yes, even after these many miles, that terrified little girl with sweaty palms is still alive and lurking in there somewhere), …..And on all those nights in between, well, we contemplate the world and life as it is.

Night watches…..So necessary to this lifestyle and so dreaded in the beginnings of our cruising.  Who knew they would become so important and necessary to me also?  And maybe that’s it….Maybe that’s what all this is about….The intensity of cruising, the highs being so high and the lows so low, and all the stuff in between allowing time for contemplation of it all……

Or, maybe it’s just true what’s been said all along….

There simply are no atheists at sea……

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Post Script 4/30/2013, 1700 local time…..We have made Raroia and safely negotiated the pass, in spite of apparently missing slack tide.  We had 4 knots of current against us, and wow, a regular pass with whirlpools and waves, but Mystic, being the big, heavy girl that she is just plowed through it and John steered us safely into the lagoon.  A couple of dolphin escorted us in, jumping and flipping up over our bowsprit as we negotiated the waves….Always playtime, gotta love ‘em!  Carefully, we picked our way across the uncharted lagoon and anchored on the east shore, behind one of the motus, the only boat here.  Just beautiful!!  LIVVG!!!   We’re at 16°04.797S, 142°22.312W.  Check it out on Google Earth….Paradise, indeed!