A boat at sea on a clear summer night in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, with Saturn rising over the Olympic mountains and the Columbia River Bar light flashing every twelve seconds eighty miles to the south, is one of the better places in the world to be. A boat in the same waters in fog at 0300 with a tanker’s masthead light somewhere off the port bow is not. Both are night sailing in the PNW, and the difference between the first scenario and the second is preparation.
This article covers the working discipline of night passages: watches, the language of navigation lights, fatigue, fog at night, and the few PNW-specific patterns that make the local night passage different from the textbook one.
Why night sailing is different
Night reduces the cruiser’s perception of three things that matter:
- Distance — at night you see another vessel’s lights at one or two nautical miles, where in daylight you see the hull at five
- Closing rate — without depth perception, two pinpoints of light approaching from 30° off the bow can look stationary until they are 200 yards away
- Sea state — the difference between a 4-foot swell and a 6-foot swell is invisible at night until the boat moves under you
Night also concentrates two kinds of fatigue: the cumulative tiredness of multiple watches, and the cognitive load of running the boat without the daylight cues that normally do half the work. A six-hour overnight passage in summer is a different kind of tired from a six-hour daylight one.
The disciplined response is not heroics. It is procedure: a watch system, navigation lights checked before sundown, a radar that is on, a tether that is clipped, and a crew that has slept.
Watch systems
The classic offshore watch system is four-hours-on, four-hours-off, rotating through the crew. It works for crews of three or more. For two-person crews — the common PNW reality — it doesn’t work; both people end up exhausted by 0600.
Working PNW watch systems by crew size:
Three or four people, multi-day passage: four-on / four-off, rotating, with the watch handover meal eaten together. Watches at 0000–0400, 0400–0800, 0800–1200, 1200–1600, 1600–2000, 2000–0000. The 1800–2000 dog watch — split into two two-hour halves — is sometimes used to rotate which person sees which dawn.
Two people, single overnight: three-on / three-off works, but is hard. A better answer is a Swedish watch — variable lengths, with longer watches in fair weather and shorter ones in difficult conditions, rotated by mutual agreement. The crew assesses every watch handover whether the off-watch is rested enough to take over.
Two people, sailing in fog or near commercial traffic: the off-watch is also up, in the cockpit, with eyes on. There is no off-watch in serious traffic.
Solo sailor: alarms set every 15 minutes; AIS proximity alarms set tight; sleep in 20-minute increments at the chart table or in the companionway, never below decks. The single-handed Race-to-Alaska solo competitors operate this way for days. It is functional. It is not safe in the way a crewed boat is.
The language of lights
Every navigation light visible at night is a sentence. Memorise the vocabulary:
| You see | They are |
|---|---|
| Red and green sidelights, white masthead above | Power vessel, head-on or near head-on |
| Green sidelight only, no red | Vessel angling to your left; you are on its port side |
| Red sidelight only, no green | Vessel angling to your right; you are on its starboard side |
| White stern light only | Vessel moving away from you |
| Two white masthead lights vertically aligned | Power vessel over 50 metres |
| Red over white (vertical) | Fishing vessel with gear deployed |
| Red over red over red | Vessel not under command |
| Red, white, red (vertical) | Vessel restricted in ability to manoeuvre |
| Green over white | Fishing trawler with gear out |
| Single all-around white light, no movement | Vessel at anchor |
| Yellow towing light above stern light | Towing vessel with tow astern |
The most common PNW night lights — the ones you will see two dozen of in a Strait of Juan de Fuca crossing — are the simple power vessel (white masthead, red and green sidelights, white stern) and the anchored vessel (single white). The harder ones to read are the fishing vessels with gear deployed (red over white) and the constrained vessels (red, white, red). Both of those mean I am limited; give me space.
A working drill: as soon as you see a new set of lights, identify the vessel type out loud. “Power vessel, port quarter, masthead and red, opening to port.” The act of saying it forces you to actually read the lights. The crew who sees three lights and does not interpret them is the crew that does not understand what is approaching.
Closing rate and bearing
The single most useful question at night, asked of any approaching light: is the relative bearing changing?
Hold a hand-bearing compass on the light. Or simply note where the light is against the boat — over the bowsprit, at the foredeck cleat, abreast of the mast. Watch for a minute. If the bearing is moving forward (the light is moving toward the bow), the other vessel will pass ahead. If the bearing is moving aft, the other vessel will pass astern. If the bearing is constant and the light is getting brighter, the two vessels are on a collision course.
This is the most important rule of night collision avoidance. Constant bearing, decreasing range = collision. Alter your course early and decisively to break the convergence.
Equipment at night
The night-sailing boat needs a working set of:
- All running lights verified before sundown. Spare bulbs aboard. A failed masthead light at 0200 in the Strait of Juan de Fuca is a serious problem; the spare in the lazarette is the answer.
- Compass illumination — red, dim. Visible to the helmsman, invisible to the eyes that need to be looking outside the boat.
- Chart-table lighting — red bulb, switchable, or red plastic film over a white LED. The chart is read with red light; the eyes do not lose their dark adaptation. Twenty to thirty minutes is the cost of a momentary white light at night.
- Radar. PNW night fog and commercial traffic make radar non-optional in any serious night passage. A 4 kW or 6 kW radar with overlay on the chartplotter shows what the eyes cannot.
- AIS — receive at minimum, transmit (Class B) for any boat operating near commercial traffic. The AIS plot tells you what every commercial vessel within range is doing, who they are, and what their CPA (closest point of approach) is.
- A handheld VHF in the grab bag. See Marine VHF Radio.
- A flashlight at every helm and chart-table station, with a red lens or red mode. White light kills night vision. Use it only when you have to.
- Tethers and jacklines rigged before sundown, used by every person on deck.
Fatigue
Fatigue is the predator at night. It makes mistakes that the day version of the same crew would never make. The disciplined responses:
Sleep before the passage starts. Four hours of sleep on the dock the afternoon before departure is worth eight hours of sleep at the wheel.
Watch food, not heavy meals. A protein bar, an apple, soup. The crew on watch is not eating roast beef and potatoes; that meal puts them to sleep at 0230.
Hydration without caffeine on the late watches. Caffeine on the 0000–0400 watch will keep the watcher alert until 0500, then crash through the morning. Water, tea, broth.
Move. Stand up every 20 minutes. The watcher who has been seated at the wheel for an hour is half asleep without knowing it.
Talk to the off-watch on handover. The five-minute conversation at 0400 is what restarts the brain. Wind from the southwest at twelve, sea two feet, vessel on the port quarter is opening, no traffic on AIS within five miles, Astoria three hours, course 270. The handover is information transfer plus the cognitive jolt of speaking out loud.
Know when to turn for shelter. A crew that is too tired to navigate safely is a crew that should be in port. Eagle Harbor is always available; Port Townsend is always available; Astoria is always available. The decision to abort a passage at 0300 in favour of an unscheduled night anchorage is not failure. It is seamanship.
Night vision
Human eyes adapt to dark in 20 to 30 minutes. White light destroys the adaptation in seconds. Therefore:
- All cabin lights — red.
- All instrument lights — red, dimmest setting that is readable.
- Flashlights — red lens or red mode.
- The companionway light — off when going on deck, off when below.
- Cigarette lighters and headlamps — closed cell phones, no smoking on deck at night.
The watch that has been on deck for an hour with proper light discipline can see a vessel’s stern light at three nautical miles and can read a chart by the moonlight. The watch that just stepped out of a brightly lit cabin sees nothing for the first ten minutes. Both are the same person; only the discipline differs.
Fog at night
Pacific Northwest fog — particularly the Strait of Juan de Fuca summer pattern — turns a clear night into a different kind of night. Visibility drops to a few hundred metres or less. Lights become diffuse halos. Sound becomes the primary detection sense.
The fog-at-night working procedure:
- Slow. Reduce speed to manoeuvring speed (typically 3–4 knots under sail, 4–6 knots under power). The slower the boat, the more time you have when something appears.
- Radar on, gain up. Tune to 1- to 2-mile range for traffic; longer ranges for landfall.
- AIS on, range tight. Watch for the converging plots.
- Sound signals. Power vessel underway: one prolonged blast every 2 minutes. Sailing vessel: one prolonged plus two short. Make the sound. The horn that is not blown in fog is a horn that does not exist.
- VHF on, on 16, with the volume audible at the helm. Other vessels in fog will call on 16. Listen.
- A second person on deck, if the crew allows. Two sets of eyes and ears in fog catch what one cannot.
- Shelter rather than persistence. If the fog is dense and the traffic is heavy and you have a port nearby, take it. Decoys for stubbornness in fog include schedule pressure, fuel pressure, and the sunk cost of having gotten this far. Resist them.
A specific night to know about
A clear August night in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, leaving the San Juans for an early-morning entry into Friday Harbor or Anacortes: the conditions are spectacular. Saturn rising over the Olympics. The Cape Flattery light flashing every ten seconds at the western horizon. The silhouette of the freighter five miles to the south, AIS-tagged MARITIME ENVOY, Liberia, bound for Yokohama. A 12-knot southwesterly carrying you east at hull speed.
This is what experienced PNW cruisers come back for. The night is the reason. Daylight passages have their own merit; the night passage has its own. The ones who have done it once almost always do it again.
The discipline above is the framework that turns the night into the rewarding thing. The undisciplined version of the same passage is the one that becomes a SAR case.
The drill that has not been done in fog has not been done. The lifejacket that is in the lazarette is not on. The bearing that is constant is the bearing that ends in a collision.
Related: Marine VHF Radio · Rules of the Road · Cold Water Survival · Marine Safety Equipment