Time is a Funny Thing (at sea)

Mario’s Log – 10 July, 2025 – Southern end of Nova Scotia:

This morning, something happened that has never occurred, even once, in my entire life standing watches; I was late. After twenty-two years of military training and habit – always waking up early enough to relieve the watch ahead of schedule – my perfect record crashed as Dan stepped into the quarter-berth to wake me. “Mario, it’s your watch,” he said, politely, to my blinking awake face.

I had set an alarm. My wristwatch was set to Eastern Standard Time (the boat-time set by the captain). Both my alarm and my watch said it was 2:00 AM. I was assigned the three to six watch. After a few confused looks, Dan assured me it was 3:00 AM and I scrambled to get ready.

Once on the helm, and more awake, I was stewing over how I had gotten so confused over the time. It did not make sense that Dan, a highly credentialed college professor, couldn’t tell two hours from three on an overnight watch. Plus, his conviction that my analog watch had lost an hour as I slept was complete. But fully awake now, I had time to think – how did my perfect record of watch-standing fall so easily? Fifteen minutes into my watch, I had figured it out. My crew couldn’t tell time. As Dan and Sam snored in their bunks, I had become the owner of a fresh new four-hour watch.

Now the ships (Garmin) Nav System has a quirk on Sarah-Sarah (and on many other boats I assume.) If you are more than ten miles offshore, the system subtracts an hour or adds one, depending on your location in the world. But that wasn’t the confounding factor in this instance. Nor was it the fact that Dan’s Apple Watch – connected, of course, to his iPhone, had connected to a tower in Nova-Scotia and changed his time zone up an hour. The problem? The real one, was this: Sam Devlin is a sneaky bastard.

With Dan’s watch waking him up an hour early for the mid-watch, Sam had his doubts about the time. But, being a sneaky bastard, he admitted (without shame apparently), to taking the extra sleep while Dan pressed on with his iPhone-induced confusion. Like all sneaks, Sam sleeps easily without regard to the downstream consequences of his actions.

Sam admitted to his ruse this morning – gleefully, I might add – in front of Dan as he apologized for being a slave to his iPhone. We all howled at Sam’s sneakiness and how I got to pay for it. It’s day two of the passage and a few thing have become clear, even if the time of day hasn’t. College professors aren’t as smart as you’d expect them to be. Boatbuilders are smarter than they look. And, my record is safe. Unless, of course, I can find a way to follow Sam on watch this trip. There’s no telling when I might make it on deck to relieve him.