I began my night watches almost a week ago. Once I got over my seasickness, I was happy to contribute to the watch schedule. It was already dark when I took the wheel. The sun usually sets by 6:30 pm, but the sky stays light way beyond that. I don’t even know what time zone we were in. The rally people use AT, Atlantic time zone, which is an hour later than EST. I hadn’t heard of AT before, but it makes sense.
As I said in the previous blogs, we have a watch schedule, both day and night. Unfortunately, my night watch is from 9 pm-midnight and then I’m on again at 6 am. That allows me 6 hours of sleep a night. However, I’m used to sleeping 8-10 hours during the night. Needless to say, I’m a bit sleep deprived. In the first few days I didn’t nap. After a few nights, I’ve started napping.
What happened a few nights ago? About an hour before my shift ended, I was looking around the cockpit. We have two winches on the portside of the boat, and two winches on the starboard. The two on the starboard are quite large with line wrapped around each one. I looked at them and saw two furry Cossacks complete with brown overcoats, hats and beards. As I stared at the one farthest from me, I saw it move. It now looked like a Russian Cossacks squirrel, with little hands that were moving. Its lips were moving too, but I didn’t hear a sound.
This was crazy. My mind told me that none of this was real, but there they were, right in front of me with fur-trimmed hats that almost covered their eyes. I looked away to the wind instrument. The instrument dial, which kind of looks like a clock, lets you set your sails properly. What I saw was the face of a chubby old man. The numbers highest on the dial looked like eyes. And the place lower down which displays the wind speed, looked like a mouth.
All of a sudden, the whole deck came to life. Line coiled and hanging by the mast became a man standing there (which really freaked me out). The antenna mast on the stern looked like a robot from Stars Wars. I closed my eyes for a minute or two, then opened them again. All the various creatures were still before me.
I finished my watch and went to bed. The next day I told Jeff and Steve that I would be napping today. Then I went onto explain my hallucinations last night. Steve said it was a very common phenomenon and I shouldn’t worry about it. Jeff volunteered that he often sees things outside of the boat, on the dark water. I feel so much better now, but I will continue to nap during the day regardless!