3am - 6am

Sam bolted upright in his bunk, his head missing the deckhead by millimetres as he swept his legs over to thump down on the floor and find his phone to turn off the alarm before it woke up his bunk mates.

Snooze? No, off completely. Sam put his silenced phone under his pillow as the curtain closest to him twitched... The body inside groaning, rolling from one side to the other before settling back in. Sam let out a breath, that hadn’t really worked had it. He was sure everyone was awake now, so carefully picked up his gear before shuffling out of the door into the galley. One foot stretched out behind him to stop the door from banging shut, he slowly slid along the thin companionway before setting his boots on the nearest bench and dumping his clothes on the table. The whole room was lit by a single red lightbulb above the sink, but compared to the pitch black of his cabin and moonless void outside – it was shockingly bright.

He reached across the sink and flicked on the kettle – a source of noise he would not compromise for the sake of his sleeping crewmates. Sam was relieving their Skipper from her watch, and he wanted some brownie points for arriving early and coffee in hand, ready to relieve his boss who was very unlikely to go back to sleep after her watch ended. She had charts to correct... But he hoped, God he hoped she would leave him the wheelhouse to himself and go below. Sam was nervous enough as it was and if he did have any doubts about the course or lit buoys in the distance – he wanted at least 2 seconds worth of blind panic in private before he figured it out and his training kicked in. Damn this was very different from the textbooks.

He slipped his salopettes over his pyjama bottoms, and tried to put the straps over his shoulders while also shoving a socked foot into a boot – making less speed in his haste than if he had done both separately. “Get it together man,” he muttered to himself, continuing...

5 minutes later he’d completed the awkward dance of getting a jumper, hoodie and jacket on in a space he couldn’t fully stand up in, and Skipper’s coffee in hand – shuffled up to the aft of the boat and stuck his head out the hatch.

“Good morning, is that for me?” came a voice from the dark.

Sam whipped his head round, and seen Skipper Charlie pass by him as she walked down from the bow – hand bearing compass in hand. “Uhm yes, yes I made you coffee” Sam replied, as she rounded on him, and taking the coffee from him in one hand, extended her other hand to him to help him stand up fully out of the hatch.

“You’re learning fast Sam,” Charlie said turning away from him as he stepped fully on the deck, “Look at this Eric, Sam made me coffee!” she said back in the direction of the wheelhouse. Eric? Oh yes, the chef. Eric didn’t usually leave the main galley if he could at all help it. Maybe Charlie put him on Sam’s watch with him as a sort of babysitter he thought to himself.

“Knows what’s good for him” Eric offered back smiling, his head sticking out the window of the wheelhouse.

Charlie flicked her attention back to Sam - “Well, standing orders are on a card over the radio, course is on the plotter, we’re still hours away from the estuary so no shipping is expected but keep an eye out for anything in our path – it’s all oyster pots closer to shore going down this way so if we do have to change course, favour going further out from the shore before you dip back towards the land. Actually, just call me if that happens. Eric has all the info, and he knows what he’s doing-”

“Big red button is stop right?” Eric offered from the wheelhouse, lifting his own coffee mug to his lips to cover a shit-eating grin back at Charlie.

“Yes Eric,” she rolled her eyes and made to step down the hatch Sam had just exited from, “Big red button is stop. I’ll be in my cabin if you need me,” and with that she disappeared into the dark red gloom at the bottom of the ladder.

Sam took a few careful steps across the deck and into the wheelhouse. On entering, and getting a better look at Eric from the little red night-light in here – he felt very, very overdressed. Eric was sat there in slippers, cargo trousers and his Royal Parks half marathon t-shirt. “Geez kid, hope we don’t get the weather you’re expecting” Eric mused, looking the fully waterproofed Sam up and down.

“Yeah I, wasn’t sure what to expect...”

“That’s ok, first time on night watch?”

“Yeah”

“Nice, well I promise you it’ll be more boring than scary.”

Sam felt a weight come off his chest he hadn’t be fully aware of until now that it had lifted – yeah, this would be fine. Nothing the chef couldn’t do in his slippers apparently...

The first hour passed uneventfully. Eric gave Sam a run down of all the important bits – showed him the standing orders, how to switch screens on the plotter to examine various bits of information in focus, before explaining how he shouldn’t trust the instruments and defer to his own judgement anyway. This actually wasn’t very helpful – but since almost every standing order ended with ‘CALL THE SKIPPER’ – Sam figured he’d be knocking on Charlie’s cabin door long before making any major calls about the safety of the sleeping souls in their bunks below came into question.

Hmm, perhaps he was still a little nervous.

Sam scribbled an entry into the log...

0402, N52^o18’25.56 E001^o52’02.99, 182^o, 4knts SOG, engine hours 2104, southeast 4, light showers, vis. good.

Then he waited for an approving nod from Eric. “Looks good. Want a sweet? They’re ginger – a little spicy, but good for the tummy.” Eric said, offering Sam a tin of hard candies from one of his leg pockets.

“Yes, yes please,” Sam took one and popped it in his mouth. Eric was not joking, the first hit of flavour felt like his tongue had been burnt – but it mellowed as he sucked. “It’s nice, thank you.”

“They go everywhere with me, 4 more tins in my cabin. Take them for sick seasickness myself, much nicer than the-”

“You get seasick?” Sam chirped in.

“Oh yes. Always have. But after the first day I’m fine.”

“That must be horrible though, the galley all hot, all the different food smells...”

“Ahh you don’t have to tell me that son, my idea of hell is a lumpy swell while making blue cheese toasties... blehhh!” He mimed chucking up in a bucket.

They both chuckled. “Fair play for putting up with it, I don’t think I could.” Sam offered.

“You never get a bit peaky when you first come onboard?”

“Nope, never have”

“Geez, God has his favourites huh? You must have good sea legs”

“I don’t know about that” Sam replied, a little quieter than before.

“If this is your first night watch, I take it’s your first voyage this long?” Eric asked, standing up to take a look out the window and scan the bare horizon.

“Yes.” Sam said. He took a beat before he continued – “I was meant to do a delivery voyage last year but the pandemic hit and well, yeah I’ve only been doing day sails – it’s all the charter guys could get for us.”

“Ah. Still feeling a little green then...” Eric looked back over his shoulder at Sam but didn’t wait for a response before continuing – “that won’t last, not even to the end of this trip.”

“Hmm. I hope so” Sam sighed, looking down at his still very new looking waterproof boots.

Another hour passed in watchful monotony.

0500, N52^o14’42.42 E001^o52’02.31, 181^o, 4knts SOG, southeast 3, fair, good.

“You see this light kid?” Eric said from the window, “Can you tell me what it is?”

Sam jumped up off the bench, finally! Something to notice... Eric handed him a pair of binoculars and stepping behind him, moved him around by the shoulders until he was looking in the same general direction Eric had been.

“I see red over white at the top, and another red light, and another white light to the back.”

“Diagnosis?”

“It’s a fishing boat.”

“And?”

“Uhm. We can see it’s port side on our starboard side, so it’s facing the same direction as us”

“Is it a problem?” Eric asked, but Sam kind of assumed the answer would be no, as Eric had gone to sit back down and was now preparing his tobacco and papers for a cigarette.

“No. Or at least not yet. If we do overtake them we’ll pass it on this bearing quite wide, right?” Sam looked up from the binoculars and towards the chart plotter for reassurance.

“Top marks” exclaimed Eric, “see, I know the books aren’t the same as the real thing but if you know the stuff you know it, now you just gotta practice it until it becomes second nature. Do you drive kid?”

“Yeah”

“When’d you pass your test?”

“When I was 17...”

“Were you a good driver then?”

“Ooh, eh – probably not”

“But you knew how to drive right?”

“Well yeah.”

“Same thing. You know what you’re doing – but you don’t have the experience yet that allows you to be confident and think on your feet and deal with the unexpected. But you will one day.”

“Hmm.” Sam pondered, “I guess you’re right.”

Eric scoffed, “I usually am, now hold the fort for 2mins, I’m gonna go stand downwind for a cig.”

The last hour flew by, or at least it felt that way – as the dawn slowly emerged, it was like watching a light come up slowly on a dimmer switch – except it was the entire empty sky. The constant state of change made everything feel like it was progressing at pace, more so that the darkness from before. Any time Sam looked down at the chart or the logbook and back up again it was that little bit brighter and bluer than before. With morning well on its way, so was breakfast – so the next watch would soon be here to relieve Eric back to the toastie maker and Sam to maybe take off some of his many clothes before the day started proper.

Sam went up to the bow, he’d spotted an oyster pot up ahead and wanted to go see if it was a one-off or the start of a big, long chain. The water looked amazing in the morning glow, and he heard the lap lap lap of the water against the hull, with little white bubbles running past him along the surface... Sam smiled.

So this was why he wanted to be a sailor, he laughed to himself. For all of the stress and worry he’d put himself through since arriving, gosh – wasn’t this all worth it? He thought so anyway. Besides, Eric seemed pretty damn sure it would only get easier for him.

“I bring libations!” came a cheerful voice from the aft deck, and Sam seen two mugs thrust up into the air above the hatch, held aloft by two arms – the owner of which was still to be revealed. It was Caroline – the Bosun. Eric emerged from the wheelhouse and hurried over to her in the hatch, “See Caroline, I knew I liked you for a reason” he winked, taking the cups off her so she could climb up. She pointed at the one on his right –

“Camomile tea for the chef, although I do not respect your decision to forgo caffeine in these trying times” Caroline exclaimed with a mock ‘huff’, and then taking the other cup back, she turned to Sam, “and Sam, I don’t know what you like so I went with milky coffee, that seemed safe enough.”

“Oh perfect, thank you,” Sam took the cup offered to him and sipped the drink carefully, “yeah that hits the spot”.

Caroline beamed back at him, pleased. “So! Talk me through where we’re at, anything strange or startling happen while I wasn’t looking?” She stepped around Sam to get in the wheelhouse, Eric mirroring her on the other side towards the other door.

“Nope. A perfect watch if I do say so myself,” Eric offered.

“You would say that” Caroline chided back, inspecting the chart plotter while Sam stood in the doorway cradling his coffee. “Ooh, we’re tootling along nicely – I want to be in the marina and using their wi-fi by teatime so that works for me.”

Sam smiled at that, this was all so normal for them he thought – and soon it would be his new normal too.