Plan the watch rota before you leave the berth

Night passages are decided long before darkness falls. Choose your watch system in daylight, over a mug of tea, and write it on a scrap of paper taped next to the chartplotter. With two or three aboard, a three- or four-hour rotation usually works well; with four or more crew, pairs of two hours on and four off keep everyone sharper, especially through the early hours. The point isn't fairness — it's that the person on deck is genuinely awake and the person below is genuinely asleep.

Name a watch leader for each stint and be clear about what the job involves: keeping a lookout, watching the instruments, trimming, and calling the skipper the moment anything feels uncertain. A catamaran's cockpit is sheltered and comfortable, which is a blessing in a seaway but a real trap for drowsiness. Sit where the wind touches your face, stand up every quarter of an hour, and resist the temptation to curl up behind the sprayhood.

Look after your night vision

Your eyes take twenty to thirty minutes to adapt fully to darkness, and one careless white torch beam destroys the lot. Fit a red filter or red mode to every headtorch aboard, dim the plotter and instrument backlights to the lowest readable setting, and tape over any stray LEDs on the autopilot, charger or stereo. Keep the companionway curtain drawn so cabin light doesn't spill up into the cockpit.

Remember the limitation of red light: it makes red objects look almost black. A red flashing mark or a port-hand buoy can vanish under a red beam, so keep a white torch or binoculars close to hand for identification, and use it briefly, low and shielded from the rest of the crew.

• Darken the boat at dusk so nobody has to adjust twice.
• Give every crew member their own red headtorch and a spare set of batteries.
• Keep binoculars handy, and use them on any light you can't immediately explain.

Keep warm, fed and dry

Cold is the quiet enemy of attention. Dress in layers — wicking base, fleece mid-layer, proper foul weather gear — plus a hat, neck buff and gloves, and put them on before you're cold, not after. A catamaran's motion is flatter than a monohull's but often sharper and more jerky, and the slapping under the bridgedeck can be tiring in a way that sneaks up on you.

Eat little and often: soup in a flask, oatcakes, nuts, a banana, a slab of ginger cake. A heavy meal at the change of watch is a recipe for nodding off. Drink water steadily; dehydration brings headaches and poor judgement. Treat caffeine as a tool — a coffee at the start of a watch, never in the last hour, or you'll ruin the sleep you need next. Keep a flask of hot water below so nobody has to boil a kettle in a rolling galley.

Every ten minutes: instruments, then the horizon

Build a rhythm and stick to it — inside, outside, sweep. Below, check position against your plotted track, course over ground, AIS targets and radar range. Then get your head out of the hatch and sweep the horizon carefully, working from the bow round to the quarter and back again. Ten minutes between visual sweeps is about right in coastal waters, less in shipping lanes or near a headland.

UK coastal cruising at night brings particular hazards: unlit pot markers and creel buoys, drifting gear, small fishing boats with dim or confusing lights, and the loom of a harbour you may mistake for a ship. Check your depth sounder as you approach any headland or bay, and watch the wind instrument for the shifts that signal a sea breeze dying or a squall arriving. On deck, run a torch over the sheets, reefing lines, luff and rudder stock for chafe, and listen — a change in the rig's hum, a flogging sail or an engine note that has altered will tell you more than any display.

Handovers, logs and the small hours

Allow five to ten minutes of overlap at every change of watch, and wake the next crew fifteen minutes before their turn so they can dress, have a drink and arrive properly awake. The handover brief should cover course and sail plan, traffic and any lights you couldn't identify, weather and what you expect, hazards ahead, engine hours, and anything odd at all. Write it in the log; a written note catches what a sleepy conversation loses.

The stretch from about 0300 to 0600 is the hardest of the passage, so plan for it: an afternoon nap, the easiest possible jobs, a hot drink, and a rotation of duties to keep minds engaged. A kitchen timer set for fifteen minutes is a surprisingly effective backstop against micro-sleeps. If you're genuinely struggling, slow the boat down, heave to, or call someone up on deck. There is no shame in it, and it is always cheaper than the alternative.

Reef early and plan to arrive in daylight

Catamarans don't heel, so they don't flinch when they're overpowered — they simply accelerate, load the rig and slam. Reef by the numbers rather than by feel, and shorten sail before the squall rather than during it. Watch for the dark patch of wind moving across the water, and use radar to track rain cells at night.

Finally, plan your passages so that you make landfall in daylight wherever you can. Pilotage at night is a different discipline, and a strange harbour entrance is far kinder at first light. Give yourself the evening to settle into the rhythm, and night sailing becomes one of the great pleasures of cruising — quiet, cool, and full of stars.