Night and Day

Night and day are two parts of our lives that are distinctly different on sea than on land. They almost blend together with no start and end to the day, as if the sun rising and setting are merely there to provide somewhat of a change. These past few weeks packed with work and fun have all seemed like the same day, all blending together.

Our schedules have changed from sleep at night to hours scattered throughout the night and day. It took some adjustment, getting used to waking up at 2:00 AM for the day. Although some of us continue to push that idea away; most have conformed to this lifestyle and it has become our routine to live a longer day than most teenagers. On the other hand, most teenagers have never experienced something like this.

On the Harvey Gamage, we are split into three different watches. One watch is on deck, ready to work at all times, even at night. All other watches are off, to sleep, eat, do homework, or just hang out. When not on watch, you sleep for a few hours and soon enough, it is your watch getting ready to get the foresail, dropping the anchor, or pumping the bilges; and this happens all day. Doing this at 3:00 PM is the same as doing it at 3:00 AM except for mere changes in warmth, visibility, and excitement is all that is accounted for.  The nights do vary though, ranging from five foot seas and ten knot winds, running around frantically to two knot winds struggling not to fall asleep.  The nights are filled with stories, bottlenose dolphins, sunsets, sunrises, bioluminescent plankton, and much much more. It is all the same though, day and night.

The humor that occurs at night is immense and very exciting. As we are all very over-tired, we end up making the best out of it, especially on wake-ups. Once a watch finishes their four-hour stint, they wake up the next watch. This always brings great laughs. Everyone is very unique in their reaction to being woken up. The classic is the sigh with mumbling in disbelief. Most people just turn over and mumble, but others respond with vulgar words. Others take some shaking to wake up and have the half asleep remark that they don’t remember, but is laughed about all day.  At some point, everyone responds with the remark, “Oo….ahh, please not right now!” Once they finish waddling across the deck, checking their balance with every crash of a wave to the hull, the monotonous look on their face fades away and they are ready to see what the night watch has to offer them. Then the watch that just got relieved heads off to bed for a few hours of precious sleep. And this process continued to repeat over and over; blending everything together.

-Cortland