Sleeping on a boat

dsc_0312jpg-2.jpg

The sun sets, you put your camera away, and after a bit of cabin time, you ready the kids for bed. Tired does not describe the way you feel. It is more like your brain is shutting down, and you need to sleep to stop it from dying.

There is really nothing like sleeping on a boat…..the waves lapping up against the hull. The sight of the immense sky filled with stars like you have never seen before right outside your cabin window.

On the other hand, there is also nothing quite so nerve wracking as sleeping on a boat filled with your children and the only thing holding you to the same spot is an anchor that YOU deployed and helped set. An anchor that the wind is trying its best to dislodge as your boat swings in a wide arch, tugging on the line disappearing into the water.

Your husband sleeps on the port settee so that he can stand up every hour and look out the hatch and make sure we are not drifting blindly into the shipping channel. You would take turns with him, but you know that tonight there is no way that sleep will find him even if he knows someone else is on watch….someone that loves his family as fiercely as he does.

Sleep comes and goes and during the wakeful times you find yourself looking out the hatch at the stars, trying to gauge, by the movement of the big dipper back and forth across your line of sight, if you are dragging anchor.

You set the anchor drag alarm on your GPS to 40 feet, because the swing of the boat is so great, if you set it anything less it will sound every 3 minutes.

The kids sleep like rocks. One in the v-berth, one on the starboard settee, and you sleep in the aft cabin with the 2 little ones…….the dog curled into a ball at your feet.

The big dipper sways back and forth, back and forth across the window, its path getting shorter and shorter as the wind eases………the next thing you know, you open your eyes and the sunrise has begun.