It was a quiet day of routines today.

We have a watch system on Itchy Foot, so in theory there is always one person responsible to keeping watch, making sure the boats is going in the right direction, adjusting the sails and making sure we don’t hit anything. Our autopilot takes care of actually steering, either based on a compass heading or based on a wind direction; either way the human intervention required is normally minimal.

There are two lengths of watches, three hour nighttime watches and four hour daytime ones. We run nighttime watches from sunset until dawn, 6pm until 6am and generally adjust the ships clock to keep the time and the sun in sync.

When designing the watch system you have an important choice, do people want to keep the same hours everyday day or do they want to be on a different watch each day, cycling through them. The obvious advantage of never changing is that your body more easily copes with fixed sleep and awake times. The advantage of variety is just that, variety. One day you get to see the dawn, the next you get the middle of the night and stars to go with it – we chose the later and variety.

6pm – 9pm: Jon had this watch last night, the first of the three hour night watches. The watch system not only dictates who is on watch, but it also tied into other chores around the boat, including who is cooking what meal on what day. The person who has the 6pm to 9pm watch also cooks dinner that day. The theory being that they have finished cooking by 6pm and their watch includes sitting on deck and eating together. They don’t do the dishes. 6-9 is a good watch, you see the sunset and the stars come out, the boat is slowly getting quiet, people who are off watch are brushing teeth, reading, tidying up and getting into bed. It’s not too hard to stay awake and 9pm comes quite quickly.

9pm – midnight: Mia always takes over from Jon on watch. She was still awake and reading in bed before coming up to take her watch. And this is the problem with the 9pm watch, after dinner is finished, dishes done, Teo in PJs with brushed teeth, there isn’t much time before the 9pm person has to get up again. It’s often not worth getting any sleep. This makes this watch quite a long one, the last hour can drag.

midnight – 3am: Tina takes over from Mia in our system. Different people have different views on this watch, Jon really doesn’t like it as the 3-4 hours sleep you get prior doesn’t really feel like enough and he finds it hard to clear his head. Mia doesn’t mind this watch, and enjoys the fact that when you go to bed again at 3am you don’t have any responsibilities again until 10am – so you get a nice long morning.

3-6am: Jon takes over from Tina. Unusually his alarm didn’t work this morning so received a much needed prod awake at 3:10 from Tina. The 3-6 watch isn’t too bad, finishing the last watch at 9pm you are ready and able to go straight to sleep, so with 6 hours of sleep (9-3) under your belt getting up at 3am isn’t too bad. Plus you get the benefit of sneaking back to bed at 6am for a morning snooze before the day starts.

Today Mia was on the first daytime watch, a four hour watch from 6am until 10am, which sees the sun come up and lately sees Teo pop his head out on deck around 7ish. After breakfast, Teo entertained himself quietly in the cockpit with an audiobook on low volume, trying not take make any noise and wake the sleeping crew. Tina, had the midnight until 3am watch and so was still sleeping on the sofa/bed in the main saloon. Jon sleeping in the back cabin would only get woken by the sails complaining or a call from someone needing help on deck.

The day continues in a pattern: once everyone has woken-up a bit, usually around 9:30, the most needy person will put on a pot of coffee and heat some milk. Breakfast is on a ‘help yourself’ basis.

Watches during the day are a lot more ad-hoc and relaxed than the nighttime watches, often most of the crew are up on deck anyway and given we are a long way from shipping and the nearest land is either 4000m below us or 500 miles ahead of us, there isn’t a lot to hit.

Mia went back to bed after her long 6am to 10am watch, feeling a bit tired and figuring she could get some rest. So with Tina officially on watch (from 10am-2pm) Jon and Teo settled down to do some boat school. Which usually happens between 10am and 1pm on passage.

Jon was on dinner duty last night so he is on lunch duty today. We had a few eggs left so while Teo was finishing off some school work Jon made scrambled eggs with toast from the Tina’s freshly baked bread. The person who makes lunch also does the dishes from lunch. Once lunch is finished the same person, Jon today, takes over the next watch from 2pm until 6pm. The afternoons are usually quiet, some playtime, project time, maybe a round of tea or coffee and maybe someone makes cakes or finds some biscuits.

And that brings us back to the next round of night watches. Mia, rather than Jon, takes the first of the night watches (6-9) and tomorrow it’ll be Tina who starts the night watches before cycling back to Jon again.

Finally the watch system also includes the role of mum. Nothing to do with Teo or child care, but mum for the boat. Mum does the evening meal dishes, cleans the toilet, cleans the galley, the stove top, checks the fruit and veg for rot, turns the eggs, cleans and fills water bottles and fairly much anything else which obviously needs a little clean or tidy. The role of mum also cycles with the watches, and is the person who had no cooking responsibilities.

So there you have it, a long and wordy post without much excitement. But hopefully, if you’ve gotten this far, gives you a glimpse of our routine and daily life on passage. As we bob across the blue.