Wednesday 27th June

Sleeping2XS cont’d

I may have given the wrong impression, that we slept twelve sold hours every single day on our trip.

Of course this was not possible, no matter how desirable it might have been.

Our many visitors probably didn’t want to sleep twelve hours; some of them wanted to PARTYPARTY PARTY, with glowsticks and music.  And we enjoyed that very much and were quite able to stay up, dancing and waving glowsticks meaningfully around, until 2am.  Others wanted to talk, eat, drink, play cards, and yes, all of that was great.  But…left to our own devices…our pillows sang their siren song…at about 8.30pm, never fail!

And no we weren’t able to sleep in until 8.30 every morning.  Quite often we were up at 4am, getting ready to leave so that we would arrive at our next destination before dark fell again.  Four in the morning is…THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, as far as I am concerned.  But we would be up and doing whatever needed to be done.  First priority – cups of hot tea; after that – whatever Captain Pete said was what happened as we sailed off on the dark mysterious sea.

These early starts were not my favourite thing.  I didn’t quite achieve the levels of crankiness and rage I read about yesterday, but I would wander around in a fairly zombie-like trance until – well probably until 8.30am!

However I am not going to complain about having to leave in the MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, because what this meant was…we weren’t actually sailing through the night; we were arriving and STOPPING in daylight.  And…stopping in daylight is one of my favourite things about The Sailing Life.  I met so many people who regularly do three-week stints across the ocean, with no stopping at all, and they just love it.  Thrive on it.  I think if I did a three-week ocean crossing I would be wheeled off at the other end with my hair white and standing on end!  Interrupted sleep for three weeks!  Two hours shifts around the clock!  Much harder than having a newborn baby…you can doze off with a newborn baby warmly feeding; you can’t gently doze off while scanning the horizon, checking the radar, making sure the autopilot hasn’t had a hissyfit.  So…4am starts are my friend, no matter how much I complain and how zombielike I may appear…