Eat. Sleep. Sail.
35º07.191' N
13º52.411' W
Because there are just two of us on the boat, we only get to rest two or three hours at a time while the other keeps watch. Last night's graveyard shift was quite demanding. The ship has three autopilots, none of which could be used last night for different reasons:
1) The main autopilot consumes a lot of electricity and the ship's batteries are old and on the fritz, so we only use it when the solar panels are actively charging the batteries (i.e. not at night)
2) The light-weight backup autopilot, which uses much less electricity, was not functioning properly
3) The wind autopilot couldn't be used because the wind kept changing
As a result, we had to steer by hand during our shifts, which meant we couldn't just sit in the nice warm cabin and keep an eye out for ships. Also, in order to conserve the charge in our problematic batteries, we left our mast lights off and only turned them on when we saw another boat's lights -- a dangerous thing to do, but we didn't have much choice. In spite of all the stress and cold, I still managed to fall asleep on my watch a few times...
Thankfully, we fixed the light-weight autopilot today (with duct tape), and after that, I've actually had a lot of free time to just sit and watch the ocean or catch up on reading.
13º52.411' W
Because there are just two of us on the boat, we only get to rest two or three hours at a time while the other keeps watch. Last night's graveyard shift was quite demanding. The ship has three autopilots, none of which could be used last night for different reasons:
1) The main autopilot consumes a lot of electricity and the ship's batteries are old and on the fritz, so we only use it when the solar panels are actively charging the batteries (i.e. not at night)
2) The light-weight backup autopilot, which uses much less electricity, was not functioning properly
3) The wind autopilot couldn't be used because the wind kept changing
As a result, we had to steer by hand during our shifts, which meant we couldn't just sit in the nice warm cabin and keep an eye out for ships. Also, in order to conserve the charge in our problematic batteries, we left our mast lights off and only turned them on when we saw another boat's lights -- a dangerous thing to do, but we didn't have much choice. In spite of all the stress and cold, I still managed to fall asleep on my watch a few times...
Thankfully, we fixed the light-weight autopilot today (with duct tape), and after that, I've actually had a lot of free time to just sit and watch the ocean or catch up on reading.
posted by james at 8:35 PM
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