Watchkeeping On A Cruising Yacht

[Sammy]

I like the 3 on 6 off watch system with 3 crew or teams. The watches naturally rotate so no one has the late night/early morning watch each day. The person coming on at 6 pm cooks the evening meal before starting their watch and the one coming off cleans up and does the dishes. Breakfast and lunch are kept simple and usually everyone makes their own when they are hungry.

On the last boat I sailed on both of the owners were Yachtmasters so while one would take a spot in the watch rotation the other would not have a set watch but was on standby all the time in case the sails needed to be reefed or there was a problem or question. This meant the person in the watch rotation could sleep for their off watch without having to get up for anything. They would rotate who was on standby on each passage.

[edsailing]

attached are some of the crew rosters I have used/come across on delivery work

[GrahamMilne]

I have done some watch systems at:

http://www.happywarrior.org/watches.pdf

The two crew one stolen from this forum! Since my only multi-day sail was from England to Portugal I can't pretend to have that much experience. So comments welcome.

[Catamariner]

Thanks, everyone, for the watch schedules! Sailing as a couple alone, we used 4 on/4 off until we got into some weather and then had to go to 2 on/2 off because we had to muscle it with heavy following seas that overwhelmed the autopilot and would slew her aft around if the helmsman wasn't careful. I like the 3 on/3off at night, I think that might work better -- 4 hours can be a very long time in the wee hours.

We're going back to sea with our son, now, who is old enough to stand daylight watches, we will probably use him for dogwatches to stagger our own schedules, and thanks for the idea. I would not want to put him on more than 2H at a time, and better it be at a time when one parent is awake below, cooking or doing other useful stuff. It's a little scary, but it's a labor of love.