Watch Plan — Crew & Rest

Watch Plan builds the rota before you slip the lines: who is on watch, who is asleep, and whether the plan is actually fair. TEN SECONDS TO A ROTA Enter the crew, pick a system, set the days. The full rotation appears hour by hour, with the night watches marked — because the night is where watch systems succeed or fail. FOUR SYSTEMS, HONESTLY DESCRIBED Three on rotating — the balanced default for two to four aboard. Four on — longer rest, but four dark hours alone is a long time. Two on — sharp and survivable for a couple, for a night or two at most. And the Swedish system, whose uneven daytime watches rotate the roster daily so nobody owns the graveyard shift. THE FAIRNESS CHECK A fixed roster quietly gives the same person the darkness every night. Watch Plan counts the night hours per crew member and tells you by name who is carrying them — and how to share them out. THE REST CHECK The plan also shows the longest unbroken rest anyone gets. Under five hours, nobody is really sleeping, and on anything longer than a night or two fatigue becomes the most dangerous thing aboard. THE NOTES A ROSTER LEAVES OUT The hardest watch to stay awake on is 0400–0800 — body temperature at its lowest, dawn playing tricks on tired eyes. Put your strongest watchkeeper there, not your newest. And on longer passages, fix the system to a 24-hour cycle: a roster that drifts daily drifts everyone's sleep with it. A PLAN FOR EVERY PASSAGE Save plans by passage and crew combination and load them back in a tap. WORKS OFFLINE No alarms, no background activity, no account, no signal. This is the thinking before the passage, not a gadget during it. No rota survives contact with the weather. When it turns, put more people on deck and let the plan go — then return to it as soon as you can. The skipper decides.