Entry & progression
This module is STCW A-II/1 watchkeeping, taught for a yacht. The certificate is Australian; the competences are the same ones a watchkeeper is held to anywhere. The handover is where more near-misses are born than anywhere else on the bridge.
Before you take it
Arrive early. Not on the hour — before it. Your eyes need time in the dark, and the handover itself needs time to be done properly, which it never is if the relieving officer walks in at 2359 rubbing his face.
Taking over the watch
- Adapt to the light. Ten to fifteen minutes minimum in darkness before you accept a night watch. Do not take a watch you cannot see out of.
- Satisfy yourself the vessel is where the chart says she is. Take the position yourself, from a source independent of the one the outgoing officer used.
- Look at the traffic. Every target, its aspect, its CPA and TCPA, and any action already taken or agreed.
- Check the plan. Course, speed, next waypoint, next alteration, the depth under you, the tide.
- Check the state of the ship. Engines, steering mode, generators, any defect, any work in progress on deck, anyone over the side, any tender away.
- Read the master's standing orders and the night orders. Every watch. They change.
- Then, and only then, say it: 'I have the watch.'
The rule that overrides the clock
WARNING — Do not take over the watch during a manoeuvre If the vessel is altering course to avoid a close-quarters situation, is in a narrow channel, is anchoring, is in restricted visibility, or is in any other condition where the handover would itself be a distraction — the relief is postponed until the manoeuvre is complete.
The outgoing officer keeps the watch. Nobody is inconvenienced by three more minutes. Everybody is inconvenienced by a collision.
The relieving officer's veto
If you are not fit to take the watch — you are ill, you have been drinking, you have not slept, you are impaired in any way — say so, and do not take it. That is not a confession of weakness. It is the single most professional thing a watchkeeper can do, and every code of watchkeeping practice on earth requires it of you.
And if you take the watch and something about it is wrong — the position does not reconcile, the plan does not make sense, a target is behaving oddly — you do not have to resolve it alone. Call the master.
Handing over
Do it in the same order you would want it done to you. Give the incoming officer time, give them everything, and answer their questions rather than resenting them. If you have made a decision they will inherit — an alteration for a target, a delay to the next waypoint, a defect you have chosen to live with — say what you did and why you did it, and let them disagree.
On a yacht, specifically
Yacht bridges are quiet, small and comfortable, and it is easy for a handover to become two people agreeing that nothing is happening. Nothing is happening right up until the moment it is. Run the handover as a procedure, out loud, on the worst night of the year and on the easiest — because the only handover you will ever get wrong is the one you did casually.