Sailing at Night: Top 10 Tips in this Helpful Guide

Have you ever dreamt about sailing at night under the stars or the magic of a full moon? 

Are you worried about the challenges of night sailing such as staying awake, unpredictable weather, and the dangers of low visibility? We’ve been there. After two years of sailing through the Gulf of Mexico and beyond, we’ve fine tuned these tips to ensure a safe passage

We have completed many overnight sails during the past nearly 2 years sailing the Gulf of Mexico, the east coast of the USA, the Bahamas and the Caribbean. Prior to this, Scott has spent hundreds of nights in the Coast Guard patrolling the waters and helping other boaters.

We use the following overnight boating tips to help us have a safe and stress free passage. In this guide, you’ll learn tips for planning your passage, managing watch schedules, must have gear and equipment, night sailing safety tips and more.

Sailing at night may be a bit daunting at first, but with the proper planning and tips below you will be looking forward to sailing under the stars as much as we do.

1. Planning Your Overnight Sailing Trips

I will never forget my first experience sailing at night! It started with calm seas and a beautiful sunset over the Gulf of Mexico, and quickly turned to winds over 30 knots and mounting waves, making it a rough and wild night.

So what happened? We deviated from our plan and left a day early without checking the weather as thoroughly as we do now.

Since that night, we have done over 15 overnight sails, and each has resulted in a calm passage as planned. Some got a bit rolly on us, and we’ve sailed through a rain storm or two, but nothing unexpected or scary.

When planning to sail overnight, it is important to check the following:

• Route Selection: Have a clear understanding of where you are going and plan for your route. Have a good estimate of how long it will take you to get there and try to avoid arriving in the dark.
• Tides and Currents: Know what the tides and currents will be doing.
  • In the Bahamas, the water can get very shallow and going through channels at low tides could result in running aground. 
  • In the Caribbean, we felt strong currents run in between the islands that can really push you off course if you aren’t paying close attention.
• Weather: More on this below, but you definitely want to be keeping an eye on the weather predictions, just as I’m sure you already do for your day sails.

On our last trip to the Bahamas from West Palm Beach to Green Turtle Cay, we planned our trip to avoid Gulfstream overnights, and crossed the Gulf Stream during the daylight hours. With our final destination being Green Turtle Cay, that meant sailing the shallow Bahamas Banks at night. 

Pick your departure and arrival times for what you are most comfortable with, keeping the weather, tides and currents all in mind.

2. How to Pick the Best Weather Window for Safe Night Sailing

After you have a good understanding of how long your trip will take, and approximately where you will be located at different times throughout your trip, make sure the weather conditions are within your comfort zone for both wind and waves.

We use several subscriptions to help us out with this. Our favorite is Predict Wind for the route planning and weather planning features.

We also subscribe to Chris Parker’s emails and have found them to be rather accurate and predicting conditions that we couldn’t see using Predict Wind alone.

We relied heavily on PredictWind, Chris Parker’s emails, and National Weather Service’s marine forecasts when we did our overnight sail across the Mona Passage, and had a nice smooth crossing.

We have many more  weather apps we love to use in addition to these two for wave heights, tides, and overall weather in the area.

As we all know, regardless of the weather predictions, pop up storms can happen. This happened on my night watch sailing along the coast of Dominica. I noticed a change in temperature and wind, and while I couldn’t see the clouds, I could sense the rain was coming.

I woke Scott up and we quickly furled in the sails even more, dropped our enclosure panels around the cockpit, and motor-sailed through the rain event with no problems.

3. Establishing a Watch Schedule

I like to have our watch system established well before we leave so I can mentally prepare for when I will need to be awake and alert during the night. 

This may sound like overkill, but I struggle with staying awake at night (at least on the flat calm nights). Knowing my schedule ahead of time allows me to feel more prepared, and even adjust my sleep schedule the day or two prior by waking up early/later and taking a nap during the day.

See What Watch Schedules Work Best for You

We have done both 3-hour watches and 4-hour watches and found that 4-hour watches work best for the two of us. When we have a third person on board, 3-hour watches work better.

It’s best to try different schedules to see what works best for you and your crew.

Be Prepared for your Watch

With Scott being prior military, I always make sure to arrive on-watch a little earlier than the “official” start of my schedule.

I get up about 30 minutes before my watch starts to give me enough time to brush my teeth, make some coffee, gather my snacks, check how the engine is running if it is running and have time for a proper turnover.

4. Relieving of Command of the Cockpit

During our turnover, we allow time for the person going off-watch to update the person coming on-watch of the following items:

• Ship Traffic – we discuss any ships we saw, any other sailboats at night, and  if they are visible on AIS.
• Weather – what have the wind and waves been doing for the past 4 hours. Any changes in strength or direction during this time?
• Sail and engine adjustments – we typically like to keep our sails furled in a bit for night sailing and often keep the engine on. We talk about any changes to the sails, rpm adjustments to the engine, etc.
• Any other items worth mentioning – We get to see some really cool things at night like bioluminescence, constellations, and moon rises that we like to discuss. 

5. Nighttime Sailing Gear and Equipment

The following gear and equipment are important for all sailing trips. However, when sailing at night, you need to be more vigilant.

• Headlamps – Make sure they are fully charged and you have more than enough. My favorite are the Energizer rechargeable headlamps as they are very bright and last a long time.
• Jack Lines – These are lines, we use webbing but you can also use rope or cable, that you run on deck from the boat’s bow to the stern which you can be tethered to using a safety harness (typically attached to your life jacket).
• Life jackets with safety harness tether – We have inflatable PFDs on board.
• Chart Plotter/Paper Charts – We use AquaMaps on a Samsung tablet with GPS, and use Navionics on our chart plotter as a backup. We also keep paper charts of the areas we sail in as additional redundancy.
• AIS (Automatic Identification System) – AIS allows other boats to see you and allows you to see other boats on the chart plotter. While not necessary, it is very helpful, especially at night, to see other boats on AIS to ensure you stay out of each other’s way. Do keep in mind though that not everyone has AIS, so there will be boats out cruising in the water that will not show up on AIS.
• Radar – Radar is a navigational aid that emits a high frequency radio wave. This signal bounces off of boats and other objects to let you know that something is out there. On our three-day two-night overnight sail in the Gulf of Mexico, we were surrounded by fog the entire passage and our radar was essential for us to see fishing boats and whatever else was out in the Gulf of Mexico with us.
• VHF Radio – Make sure it is working properly and keep it on standby on Channel 16.
• Communication Device – Our overnight sails take us out of cell phone range. Depending on how long the passage plan is, or the stability of the weather, we use our Garmin Inreach and Starlink for weather updates.
  • Garmin Inreach  is also useful for emergency situations if we are out of VHF Radio range as it is operating off satellite. Garmin will be able to tell our exact location from our device. You can find the latest model Garmin InReach Mini 2 here for real-time tracking and communication.
  • Starlink is also very useful to sailors for weather checks and checking in with family and friends on shore, however, it does not have an emergency support feature like Garmin Inreach or Iridium Go do.
• AfterShokz Bone Conduction Headphones – I love using my AfterShokz headphones during night sailing. They allow me to hear what is going on around me (engine noises, etc.) while also being able to listen to my favorite music or podcast. These AfterShokz work great because they are sweat resistant and hold up well in the humid sailing environment.

6. Safety Tips for Sailing at Night

It is very important to stay alert on overnight sails. With our crew of two, on overnight sails one person is sleeping while the other person is in the cockpit navigating. It is dark, and sometimes challenging to stay awake, but crucial to stay aware of your surroundings and the weather conditions.

Here are some top safety tips for sailing overnight:

• Stay tethered in when alone in the cockpit – A rule on our boat is that on night watches, or when the other person is sleeping, the person in the cockpit is wearing their life jacket and is tethered in at all times. This also gives the person trying to sleep peace of mind (well, for me it does)!
• Hourly Coordinate Documentation: Each hour we write down our coordinates, course and speed. Worst case scenario and our electronics go out, we will know our location within the last hour to be able to continue navigating on our route using paper charts.
• Hourly Weather Checks: We also document the weather conditions each hour to see any trends in increasing or decreasing wind speed, wave height, and atmospheric pressure.
• Hourly Engine & Bilge Checks – Each hour, we conduct the following visual checks:
  • Engine check – Belts, coolant level, etc.
  • Dripping shaft packing – to make sure the water drips remain consistent, as ours tends to stick up occasionally.
  • Bilge pump area – to make sure we don’t have water flowing into the area that shouldn’t be.
• Emergencies – We discuss ahead of time what to do in the event of emergencies. While you can’t plan for every type of emergency, we establish rules for when I should wake up Scott. These include:
  • Winds pick up more than 5-10 knots greater than forecasted
  • Any change in our current conditions (funny engine noises, serious electronic issues)
  • Navigational hazards (i.e. boat traffic) that I am not comfortable with on my own

7. How to Navigate Safely While Sailing at Night

Navigation at night becomes much trickier when you can’t see what is around you. For example, sailing at night lights vary depending if you are motoring or only under sail. 

Here are a few things to make sure you are familiar with before going out on your sailboat at night:

• Be familiar with both inland and international navigation lights requirements so you can properly identify what types of vessels you are seeing and recognize any risk of collision
• Know how to use Radar so you know what you are looking at, and be able to zoom in and out.
• Know how to use AIS and check the information on the boats (speed, direction, type, etc.)
• Make sure your own running lights are working properly so other boats can see you
• Use red lights at night (often included on head torches) when walking around/inside the boat. Red lights help with your night vision as they do not affect your eye’s ability to adapt to the dark. White lights make it difficult for your eyes to adjust to the dark.

8. Preparing for a Comfortable Night

You’re in for a full night of sailing, so make sure you are comfy!

• Set up your bed ahead of time if you aren’t sleeping in your normal cabin. During overnight sails, the person not on watch sleeps in the salon. That way the person on watch can easily reach out to them from the cockpit if something goes wrong.
• Wear comfortable clothes, and have access to several layers in case it gets cooler at night than anticipated.
• Have your rain gear on hand in the event of a pop-up shower
• Sailing with a pet means we need to make sure they are comfy too! Our dog, Mangaux, likes to stay in the cockpit during peaceful overnight sails, so we make sure he is settled in, tethered in, and has his comfy spot to sleep (usually our big blue chairs!)

9. Provisioning for Overnight Sailing

Depending on the weather and sea conditions, you may not be able to, or be comfortable with making meals in the galley while underway.

• Prep meals and snacks ahead of your departure that are easy to eat. Some of our easy favorites include:
  • Homemade Chex Mix
  • Pasta Salads
  • Sandwiches
  • Cold Pizza
  • Overnight Oatmeal for breakfast the next morning
• Drinks
  • When getting ready for the Bahamas, we purchased a Soda Stream to make our own pop (yes, I call it pop 😉). Before night passages, we will make a bottle of coke to help keep us awake at night.
  • If it is calm enough, we will make coffee using our French Press, or use instant coffee on overnights for a caffeine kick. Both require heating up water on the stove, so we only like to make coffee in calm conditions. If power isn’t an issue, there are several great electric coffee makers for boats.

10. Enjoying the Overnight Sailing Experience

When I first started out sailing, I was nervous about the idea of doing overnight sails. Now that I have several nights sailing under the stars, including a rough and scary one, I actually prefer them to shorter sailing passages.

Looking up at the night sky FULL of stars out in the ocean is something I feel very thankful to be able to experience. It also helps that there is much less boat traffic at night compared to the daytime.

Making the proper preparations, planning for good weather windows, having the proper gear, and conducting hourly checks are essential to aid in a peaceful experience. It also helps me to get proper naps in ahead of my nighttime watch and have good music downloaded to play in the background. And of course, don’t forget the snacks!

FAQs about Sailing at Night

Are you Ready for a Night under the Stars?

With good planning, sailing at night can be a very enjoyable experience. Planning your route ahead of time, picking a good weather window, and having the right safety gear will help you have a safe and successful passage. 

Staying awake is another key element, so be sure to be properly rested before you set sail. Having plenty of healthy snacks and meals prepared will help keep your energy levels up as well.

I hope you have smooth overnight sailing experiences and enjoy it as much as we do! What have been your favorite sails overnight? We would love to hear from you on our Facebook and Instagram pages.

Read More about our Night Sailing Adventures

• Sailing the Gulf of Mexico from Mobile, AL to Key West, FL
• Easy Sailing Offshore from Florida to North Carolina
• Sailing to the Bahamas in December: Our Sailing Adventure
• Sailing Abacos to Eleuthera: Sailing into the New Year
• Sailing to the Dominican Republic: The Thorny Path Part 1
• Sailing in the Dominican Republic: The Thorny Path Part 2
• Sailing Puerto Rico: The Thorny Path Part 3
• Amazing Sailing and Powerful Tradewinds: The Thorny Path Part 4
• The Mona Passage: Proven Tips for a Safe Crossing