Lack of sleep -- the danger

CRUISING SAILORS undertaking long voyages need to be aware of the dangers of sleep loss. Apparently, a surprising number of sailors suffer from hallucinations caused by fatigue. And fatigue comes about when you don’t get a long enough stretch of deep, dreaming sleep.

Now I know that many long-distance sailors, particularly singlehanders, somehow manage to get by with many short snatches of sleep. Often they sleep for only 20 minutes and then get up to have a look around the horizon.  

But psychologist Dr. Glin Bennet, who interviewed competitors in a singlehanded race across the North Atlantic, discovered that 50 percent of them experienced one or more illusions or hallucinations.

I remember Frank Robb telling me of his experience. Frank was an intrepid seaman, a fisherman and a sailboat owner who learned his lessons in the stormy waters of the Cape of Good Hope, and who sometimes voyaged rather farther afield.

He was once singlehanding in his old gaffer when he encountered four days of rough weather in the Caribbean. As usual, he was deprived of wholesome sleep during that time, and when the storm subsided he wasn’t too sure of his position. But soon he spotted a fishing boat, and, in the distance, an island with a protected harbor.

He sailed in, waving to a launch crowded with sightseers, and found a good anchorage. With the last of his energy he lowered his anchor and went down below, where he passed out on the saloon floor.

Twelve hours later he woke up and went on deck. There was no land in sight, There were no boats around. Nothing but sea. The anchor was down, however, dangling uselessly at the end of a mere eight fathoms of rode.

Luckily, he felt no anxiety about his hallucination. He realized that sleep deprivation had affected his judgment, and that his overtired mind had invented the island to relieve him of the anxiety that was preventing him from getting healing sleep.

We now know that dreams are important. Fatigue affects you mentally as well as physically. It’s dangerous. And if storms prevent you from dreaming, your mind will eventually compensate with a parade of waking dreams called hallucinations. The good news is that hallucinations leave no permanent bad effects on the mind, so there is nothing to be frightened of.  To prevent hallucinations, it seems, you need an occasional uninterrupted sleep of six hours or more. And that’s not something that can ever be guaranteed for a singlehander. 

Today’s Thought

Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams?

— Tennyson, The Higher Pantheism

Tailpiece

“Boy we had some excitement at our place last night. We had a burglar in the house. You should have seen my husband coming down the stairs three at a time!”

“Did he catch the burglar?”

“Hell no, the burglar was upstairs.”

^{(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for another Mainly about Boats column.)}

Bootless and wide awake

IF THERE’S ONE THING that singlehanded passagemakers like to talk about it’s sleep. Specifically, they like to discuss how much sleep they can afford to indulge in at any one time without risking their lives in collisions.

Some of them sleep for long hours at night when they’re well away from shipping lanes. Others prefer to stay awake all night and keep watch. They do their sleeping during daylight, when there’s a greater chance of being spotted by a ship. And still others sleep day and night for periods varying from 20 minutes to an hour. Twenty minutes is a common choice because that’s supposed to be the average time it takes a ship to reach you after she has appeared over the horizon.

But not matter what system you choose, it’s a fact that the great majority of singlehanders don’t get enough sleep — certainly not the same amount they’d get in a safe port, or nicely tucked away in bed at home. So even when they’re keeping watch by eye, as they’re supposed to according to the collisions regulations, they often find it difficult not to doze off.

There are various drugs you can take to stay awake on watch. Most of them are not very healthy in the long run, but I did run across one drugless method the other day that wouldn’t do anything worse than give you frost-bitten toes.

A military veteran said that when he was in the army he was taught to stay awake by removing one of his boots.

He said: “The brain keeps asking itself ‘Why have we got only one boot on? What’s the plan? What’s happening? Is this right? Should I be doing something? Will we die?’ And that makes it impossible for anyone to doze off accidentally.”

Well, I must say it’s a novel approach. I have no experience of how well it works, but it does occur to me that a really sharp brain would say to itself ‘Hah, he’s just trying to trick us into staying awake,’ and promptly fall asleep.

But I suppose army brains aren’t that sharp on the whole, certainly not as sharp as sailors’ brains, which live under the threat of severe punishment if they’re caught sleeping on watch.

However, if any of you would like to experiment and pass the results on to me, I’ll publish them for the benefit of singlehanded sailors. You never know; you might save a life.

Today’s Thought

It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.
— John Steinbeck

Tailpiece

A military doctor was examining a man back from Afghanistan.
“Do you pass water normally?” he asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“Don’t go more than usual at night?”
“Um — no, sir.”
“When you go, does it burn at all?”
“Don’t know, sir. Never tried to light it.”

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

The joy of being sinful

I WAKE UP well after dawn and let my eyes dwell on the moving light show overhead. The water is sparkling this sunny morning in this quiet cove. It throws its dazzling reflections onto the white fiberglass over my head in the V-berth. And a deep feeling of bliss suffuses my body. There is simply nothing more luxurious or blissful than lying late in bed on a small boat, knowing that people on other boats in the anchorage are dutifully scrubbing their decks, wiping the dew off their varnish, and generally hopping around attending to the tasks of the day.

But it wasn’t always thus. I was brought up by proverb, idiom, maxim, and commandment, both Biblical and parental. (“Thou shalt not question the hour of bedtime.”) It was a time and place when Puritan virtues were esteemed. I never took too much food and I always cleaned my plate. I never talked to an adult until spoken to. I was taught to submerge myself in the team, never to stand out from the crowd. I washed behind my ears because cleanliness was next to godliness. I always went to bed on time. I never argued back. I would never have dreamed of having my nose pierced or my navel tattooed. Punctuality was the courtesy of kings, of course, and lying abed in the morning equated to sloth, one of the deadly sins. Early to bed, early to rise, on the other hand, made a man healthy, wealthy and wise.

Actually, I couldn’t tell if it made me healthy, but I certainly became suspicious, years later, when it failed to make me wealthy or wise. I eventually had a serious talk with my conscience, which agreed (though rather reluctantly) that lying abed in the morning, though possibly sluggish, unproductive, and anti-social, should not be classified as one of the seven deadly sins.

Nevertheless, deep in the folds of my grey matter there still lurks a primeval suspicion that my parents were right. And that’s what makes things so delightful. There is simply no bliss greater, no pleasure more profound, than that which springs from sin.

I draw the sleeping bag up around my chin and shut my eyes. A happy smile parts my lips. It’s morning. It’s late. I’m still in bed. It’s wonderful. I’m probably sinning, and will be for another half-hour at least. And I don’t give a damn.

Today’s Thought
The avenues in my neighborhood are Pride, Covetousness and Lust; the cross streets are Anger, Gluttony, Envy and Sloth. I live over on Sloth, and the style on our street is to avoid the other thoroughfares.
— John Chancellor, New York, 24 Dec 84

Boaters’ Rules of Thumb, #159
Extensive research has revealed that a radar operator’s attention drops off sharply after 30 minutes. More than 50 percent of all vessel sightings are made in the first half-hour of radar watches lasting two hours or more. So, if you have radar aboard and are relying on it in conditions of bad visibility, try to relieve the watch every 30 minutes.

Tailpiece
“Please tell His Honor what the man said when you opened the door.”
“Your Honor, he said he hadn’t had a bite for five days.”
“And what did you do?”
“I bit him.”

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

Sleeping problems

MOST SAILORS with reasonably sized boats find themselves singlehanding sooner or later. If their next port of call is more than 24 hours away, they run right into what I consider the singlehander’s biggest problem — when and how to sleep.

In the first place, a singlehander who sleeps for any time at all is breaking the law because he or she can’t maintain the required lookout. But nobody ever seems to prosecute singlehanders, probably because they come off worse in any encounter with a ship, so we’ll ignore that objection for now.

From what I can gather from published interviews with solo sailors, most of them think the best thing to do is nap for 20 minutes at a time. Then they get up, have a look around the horizon, check the course and the sails, and go below to set the kitchen timer alarm for another 20-minute nap. This apparently goes on all night from dusk to dawn. In theory, if they get 10 minutes of actual sleep in each 20-minute period, they’ll get 30 minutes of sleep in every hour, or six hours during the night.

Then, during the day, they can take a longer nap, justifying it on the grounds that a collision is less likely during the day because a sailboat is then easier to see and avoid.

Why 20-minute naps? Well, there seems to be a theory that 20 minutes is how long it takes a ship to move from just below your visible horizon to the spot where you will be in 20 minutes’ time.

Now the deepest part of sleep, the part we need most, apparently, if we are to avoid fatigue and hallucinations, is called REM sleep, named after random eye movement. It’s not normally the first part of our sleep patterns, but it seems many singlehanders have managed to train themselves to fall into REM almost immediately they lie down, and they get 10 minutes or more of REM in every 20-minute sleep period.

It usually takes about a week to get into the routine of instant REM, so if you’re planning a solo voyage you’d do well to practice in advance.

Not everybody follows the 20-minute nap routine, of course. Many optimists just sleep the night through as if they were safely in port, getting up only to shorten sail or answer the summons of an off-course alarm. On the whole, I can’t help thinking they’re probably just as safe as the 20-minute nappers. It seems to me that a sleeping singlehander is more likely to run into another sleeping singlehander than to collide with a ship manned by a regular crew and maintaining a proper lookout. And serve the two of them right.

Today’s Thought
It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.
— John Steinbeck

Boater’s Rules of Thumb, #92
Gaff mainsail. In the unlikely event that you want to convert to a gaff mainsail, here are the traditional rules of thumb for proportions:
Luff: Between 2/3 and 4/5 of the foot.
Head: Between 3/5 and 2/3 of the foot.
Gaff: About 35 degrees from vertical — but a gaff on a tall, narrow sail needs to be more horizontal, like that on a schooner’s foresail, otherwise it sags to leeward.
Boom angle: The height of the mainsail clew above water level should be 1.4 times the height of the tack above water level.

Tailpiece
I don’t know how much truth there is in the medical theory that everybody is slightly taller in the morning than they were in the evening, but I can tell you this: all my life I noticed a pronounced tendency to become short toward the end of each pay period.