How We Do Night Watches With Kids

So first of all, what are night watches?

When we’re at sea sailing from one destination to another, we can’t just stop for the night — so we keep moving. So, we've created a schedule that we like - different to a solo sailors's night, and not a crew rotation either - we like a good routine and this is what we've come to!

Night watches are the times when one person stays awake to watch the boat while the others sleep. That way, if anything changes, that person can either adjust the boat or wake someone for help to change sails.

Now that we’ve covered that brief explanation, let me tell you how we’ve gotten the kids to help with this (because I’ll take any extra sleep I can get!).

Who Helps

For now, we only have the older two kids helping with night watches, as they have that little bit more awareness and we can fully trust that they know what to do. The other two could most definitely do it, but we’ve found a rhythm with the four of us — Kris, Shona, Bella, and Finn — and it works well. Though recently Archie has been stepping up and helping out with Kris's shift.

The Times

We split the night up into manageable time periods so that each person still gets enough sleep. These are the watch times:

- 8pm – 12am

- 12am – 2am

- 2am – 5:30am

- 5:30am – 9am

Right, want to take a guess who takes which shift out of the four of us? Okay, let’s see if you guessed correctly!

Who Takes What Watch & How It Works

The first watch goes to Shona, who likes to eat dinner up at the helm and then listen to an audiobook as she stays up until midnight. Watching the stars come out and (hopefully) seeing the moon shine down is definitely a highlight of the first watch.

Around midnight, she heads down to wake up Finn, who stumbles upstairs to trade places and slowly wakes up as he watches the sails and settles in for two hours in the middle of the night. He mostly reads or watches a movie, checking the horizon every ten minutes or so. This guy gets the darkest — and maybe hardest — shift, but he likes it because he can jump back into bed when he wakes Kris up at 2am and then sleep until late morning without having to think about anything.

Kris’s watch is one of the shiftiest, as the winds often move from the night’s steadiness into the morning change. But as captain, he handles it just fine. His watch is usually spent researching the next destination or listening to (or watching) something. It’s also one of the longest, and he tends to take 20-minute naps up at the helm to catch up on sleep.

Come 5:30am, there may be the very beginnings of the sky slowly lighting up as dawn approaches. This signals the time to go down and wake Bella up for the sunrise shift. After handing over, Kris heads back to sleep and Bella keeps an eye on things as the sunrise spreads wonderful daylight and brings the relief of another night having passed.

Journaling, writing, and loads of reading fill the morning hours for Bella until around 9am, when either her siblings or Shona will come and trade with her, sending her down for a nap until midday. By the time she wakes up, everyone’s day is well underway and “passage life” is in full swing.

Notes

There are a few important things to note here:

- Kris sleep in the saloon: this is so that if anything goes wrong, he can be right there and ready to help. He’s also the one everyone wakes if they need help changing sails or dealing with anything else.

- Headphones rule: the rule that if anyone is listening to or watching something, they only have one headphone in so they can still hear what’s happening around them.

- Napping on watch: on the subject of taking naps on watch — if you do, there has to be an alarm set for twenty minutes so you can wake up and check everything before laying back down for another twenty.

- Safety rules at night: those on watch either have to wear a life jacket or have one right next to them. No one goes on deck without another person watching, and no one goes on deck without a life jacket. Simple, but very real.

Summary

This is how night watches work on Happy Days and how we’ve learned to get the kids involved. It’s a lot of responsibility, knowing everyone is asleep and trusting you to make sure you’re safe and heading in the right direction — but they’ve risen to the challenge and have our full trust.

We’d love to know if you’ve ever done a night watch and how it went. And if you have any suggestions or comments, we’re all ears — let us know in the comments!