Why in the fracking hell do you sleep at NIGHT, at sea?? and ? again ?
Wouldn't it make more sense to sleep in the daytime? If you had to wake up to an emergency, wouldn't it be a lot easier to wake up, step up on deck, and be able to see everything within a couple of miles, and all the way to your masthead, immediately?
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Sorry, just saw another post by someone who goes to sleep at dusk, and wakes at dawn.
To re-address the original post:
It seems like a bad idea to simply sleep through the night on a solo sail. When I was offshore at night, I set my watch to alarm every ten minutes when I was on watch. Whether I dozed off with the wind vane steering or not, being reminded to look around regularly seems like a good idea.
However, many of the dangers a solo sailor might encounter at sea are going to be virtually unavoidable whether awake or asleep. When awake, you can usually see other vessels; they should all have running lights. However, someone mentioned submerged containers, maybe an adrift vessel that parted from its anchor or mooring and drifted offshore, a whale, a large breaking wave. Even awake and looking around, a solo sailor who encounters these hazards is likely to not see them until the collision. As capta suggests. An awake, aware, and night adjusted response is going to be far better than a jolted-out-of-sleep, bleary-eyed, I-need-a-moment-to-orient-myself state.
When offshore for days or weeks at a time, sleep patterns are going to take on a different rhythm. Also, awareness of the vessel becomes more inherent in a responsible skipper. Even asleep, you become use to a certain regular movement, sounds, etc. If sleeping on the hook, you'll likely wake up when the boat stops pitching and starts rolling when your anchor line parts, for example. Been there, done that. You wake up pretty fast when the wind and waves are threatening to carry you aground.
These are dangers that, as has been said, are inherent and need to be approached with informed awareness and conscious choice. Solo or crewed, most of the offshore dangers are unavoidable without a knowledgeable and thoughtful plan. Being in the cockpit, even asleep is a must, to me. Put on your foulies and harness and stretch out topside. I'd rather wake up in the cockpit than in a flooding cabin.
Is it better to sleep by daylight and stay awake more in the dark? Maybe. It probably will be easier and faster to assess the emergency in the daytime or when already awake at night. A 50' sailboat is pretty small and we spent more time in the trough of the waves with their crests over our heads than up on top and a good view of the horizon. Even a lighted ship is easy to miss out there. The advantages to being awake at night are obvious and, in my opinion, limited mostly to the response to an actual emergency. Avoiding that emergency is not going to be any more likely by changing your sleeping times.
-Will
