When last we met, we were talking about the long sea passage from the Galapagos Islands towards Pitcairn Island. 2,700 miles is a long way. We mentioned that as keen and excited as we are to be at Pitcairn, we must get there first – and that a main purpose of this voyage in Picton Castle, is to live life at sea, in a fine strong sailing ship, under reliable and proven square sail, on deep water passages, like those of
yore in the great Age of Sail, now eclipsed. And that we fall into happy routines and rhythms of a good ship, with good shipmates, at sea.
What might these happy routines and rhythms be?
Watches
At sea all hands besides the cook and the engineer are on watches: 12-4, 4-8, 8-12, around the clock. All stand two four-hour watches every day. Four hours on duty then eight hours off duty, twice a day. Some ships do a six hours on and six off watch rotation, which sems to work OK too. But we prefer 4 on, 8 off. Makes life better, no? There is so much to do on watch. We must steer the ship of course. Some are naturally better than others at this important role, but all hands are doing pretty well now. We must handle sail: the winds pipe up and lay down, squalls come and go; sails must come in swifly and safely, then get set again – the watch must be very good at this essential task. And doing pretty well, they are.
We must keep a proper lookout. We would not want to hit a drifting container, big log or much else for that matter – we probably will not hit a big ship. They are big and easy to see. In the daytime anyway. But we also want to keep a good lookout to make sure we can spot anyone in distress, say, in a low life raft or yacht awash. Too many stories of ships sailing right by liferafts with people aboard and not seeing them. Let that not be us. On either side of that equation.
Watch duties
In addition to steering, keeping a good lookout, hourly ships checks throughout the ship, and sail handling (as well as regular ship maintenance) each watch has its own special daily duties. The ship’s day is from 0600 to 1800, or dawn to dusk, which ever makes more sense at the time.
The 4-8 watch, after steering and keeping her going through the last of the dark night in early morning hours, turns to at 0600 – or dawn – whichever comes second and they usually give the ship a good morning wash down, followed by a period of “soogee”. Soogee is scrubing off accumulated fingerprints and sundry smudges that grew over the last 24 hours. Under the direction of the Bosun or Mate, the 4-8 might take a certain area of the ship and scrub it up especially well, then move on to another on the morrow. We start the electricity generating cycle about 0600 as well. The generator is usually off well before noon. And that is that for engine noise for this ship. We will live off our ample batteries all day and night coming. No noise, no smoke…
The 8-12 watch will look after cleaning the below decks areas after breakfast: heads, bunk areas and such, before getting started on the day’s projects. They might clean out the vegetable lockers. On any passage the trick is to make the fresh stuff last as long as possible but also to eat it up before it goes off. We hate waste. Eggs too, if treated properly, last a long time – but not forever! And if one cracks just a little? Oh boy, not fun. The day’s projects may include sanding and painting, scraping and varnishing, knockaroost and priming steel work, tarring the rig, greasing the the masts upon which yards hoist, oiling the others, rigging, renewing chafe gear, sailmaking and repair, helping the engineer keep the engineroom clean and neat – and sundry other jobs that crop up.
The 12-4 takes over from the 8-12 in all the tasks that are under way. Known as the “graveyard watch”, the 12-4 also turns to at midnight – some people loathe this watch, others prefer it. Who can say? Then they pass it all on to the 4-8 in the afternoon when this watch puts everything away for the day by 1800 at the latest. Paint projects done in time for the paint to dry before sunset, paint brushes cleaned, tools put away and so on. Make the ship nice for the coming night.
Off Watch
Life aboard is not all about watches or ship’s chores. All hands have about 16 hours a day free time. In these hours naturally they need to
eat and sleep. But only so much of these two precious things one can do. Most everyone has six or more hours a day at sea to do whatever they like. Mending clothes, washing clothes, reading, card games on the hatch, drawing, knitting, painting, sketching, staring off at the horizon, learning navigation and at night, stars, so many stars, when it’s not cloudy. But a big thing is just finding that groove in your bunk as the ship sails ever onward, deep ito the South Pacific Ocean, bound for an amazing island. Yet we are already where we want to be.
