Sleeping is a job, too

The position of skipper is responsible for safe passage and the health of crew, but as George Day reminds us in this Cruising Compass report, one person cannot do it all:

Not long ago, I crewed on a 42-footer for a passage from the Chesapeake to Bermuda with a skipper who was making his first offshore trip. He had been preparing himself and the boat for a month and was truly excited to be finally offshore… so excited and nervous and vigilant that he wouldn’t leave the cockpit or the nav station.

He stayed up all the first night, all the second day and then all the second night. By the second morning at sea he was an exhausted wreck and his ability to make decisions had evaporated. Had we encountered bad weather or a serious gear failure, our skipper would not have been fit enough to deal with it.

We finally got him to go to bed and he slept for eight hours. When he awoke, he was a new man with a new perspective. Sitting in the cockpit sipping coffee as the sun sank lower in the west, he said, “You know, with all the work and preparation that went into getting ready for this trip, I never considered that going off watch and sleeping was a vital part of the job.” And, so it is.