Short handed sailing

I sail solo almost exclusively. I sail a Currawong 30 which is a delightful, easily handled boat for a single hander. I sail almost exclusively with a windvane because I am an enthusiast. My sailing is mostly day sailing because that's what I do in my retirement after 50 years of watch keeping! Reefing is easy, see points 2 and 3.
I use SeaClear on a laptop mounted on chart table [see photos] Garmin handheld back up, some photo copies of charts in a plastic folder. I eat out of cans cold.

My solo Spanish friend that sailed from Spain to Australia and back tells me he sleeps during the day as he believes that traffic will see him and then he does he's watches at night.
I personally do my watches from 1 or 2 am and sleep with a kitchen timer on my chest set at 20 min intervals till sunrise and then if conditions are clear I stretch the time out further. I'm a cruiser and don't take associated risks as per racing,fair weather sailer hence no pfd but will use a harness on jack lines on the deck for sail changes at night.
What's the point if you wear a pfd if your planing on cutting it with a knife anyway? Haha

I think that sleep is one of the most critical safety factors in short handed sailing. You probably have to develop an understanding of your own physiology and how you adapt to altered sleep patterns and train yourself to manage that. There is an exponential link between poor decision making and sleep deprivation. Many have clearly read Dave Adams book where he has a 20 minute cycle based on the time it takes for a ship to appear on the horizon to imminent collision. David was a master mariner but 30 years ago radar was not available sailing boats and AIS non existent. Although you should be aware of the limitations of both systems it is (in my opinion) more important to maintain sleep cycles rather than set a 20 minute timer. I use an alarm setting on my ipad air which has a waterproof case and is integrated with all shipboard electronics. I usually set the alarm 45 minutes ahead from when it goes off. Depending on weather state and stability of weather system I will either sleep on the cockpit floor (lousy weather) or in sea berth below in good weather and then either in my pfd/harness and wet weather gear or with that gear close at hand. Immediately after resetting alarm and clipping in to go upstairs I will do a thorough visual scan through 360 deg. This will take at least 5 minutes ie checking where you might expect a flashing light to be visible or ensuring that a distant vessel was temporarily obscured. Then go below and check navigation including such things as wind speed and direction changes, barometric pressure changes. boat speed heading , SOG and COG, zoom in and out on radar and AIS and check charted position at various zooms for anything that might be of interest to avoid. ie islands, rocks and reefs. Then go back upstairs to get a visual on anything that has been picked up. Then back downstairs to work out what if anything needs to be done.
I have a pressure cooker and then might reheat some food or make a cuppa but always consume plenty of water and eat such things as trail mix.
Then back to sleep, usually have about 20-25 minutes left which is enough for me to sustain overnight if I can get a bit longer maybe a few 40 min sleeps during the day. Please feel free to paragraph the above.

Ive made a couple of 24 hour stints.. i found i was in better shape without coffee. Water, nuts, energy bars and cans of fruit in the cockpit. Few times it got so rough i could not let go of the tiller, i mean there were times could urinate in a bucket and times that would be impossible. I had ways to getting comfortable with wrist tied to the tiller, eye on the compass and scan horizon every 20 minutes in more peaceful conditions. Also, triple checking if i have my heading right.

I do a lot of short handed and single handed sailing.
Of course sleep is a problem on long legs. I find that I can manage a day and a night without sleep but after that fatigue tends to alter your rational thinking. Some people can go a lot longer and some not as long.
When I am doing overnight legs with my wife and it is just for the one night we don't sit watches and prefer to both stay up through the night. This way one can make a cuppa or something to eat while the other keeps watch but the best part is that two sleepy brains have got to be better than one.
I used to regularly sail non stop from Southport to Lake Macquarie on my own in one leg. The trip generally took me three days with a variation one way or the other of three hours. The first 24 to 36 hours were normally OK but as soon as I noticed I was excessively tired (which was probably sometime after I actually was) I used to set an old alarm clock for ten minute intervalls. On the alarm I check my horizons for lights, go below and check my course (these days its a matter of looking at the plotter in the cockpit) check wind and sails, check horizons again and then set the alarm for another then minutes. I never sleep in a berth when night sailing on my own. I think the tendency to be to comfortable and sleep through the alarm would be a problem for me.
Today I have AIS to help but the biggest problem I have ever encountered off the coast is bloody commercial fishing boats. More than once I have had a reasonably close encounter only to discover no one at the helm and everybody in the stern doing whatever fishing people do. The problem with the fishing boats is that unlike most boats they dont usually keep to a straight course so need constant observation
I like my food and unless the weather says otherwise I usually eat the same at sea as what I do at home. I have just purchased a thermal cooker and if it lives up to its advertise expectation will give me a viable alternative if I know bad weather is approaching. I also carry a variety of quick foods and am quite happy eating out of a can if I have to.
Having said all of that I have had a few times when I have made a goose of myself because of tiredness. A good example, before satnav and gps was on one occasion coming down past Coffs just after dawn and with land just visible, my dead reckoning told me I should be abeam of South Solitary Island. Sure enough, right on cue, up pops South Solitary Island. Some time later another South Solitary Island come into view. Of course the first South Solitary was North Solitary. The silly thing was, I was confused when I saw the second island and because there was and island where I thought there should have been I didn't bother reading the light sequence. Another example was anchoring at the top of Curtis Island going north at 2 AM. after several months in NSW and a straight run from Garys Anchorage. Looked at the sounder and dropped the appropriate anchor scope. Just as I was getting up in the morning the keel hit the bottom on the swell. It wasn't a real big deal and I winched myself out to deeper water but it could have been a lot different in another anchorage. The problem ???? I was tired and after months in NSW forgot to allow for the 2 to 3 meter tides in the north.
All of the boats that I have had are capable of being sailed from the cockpit. This includes reefing. I think that this is one of the most important things single handers should consider. You might get into a spot of bother if you are tired but you definitely will get into trouble sooner or later, if you have to go forward in heavy weather to handle sails or rigging or even things on deck that need attention. You might have the right harness and safety gear but it is just bloody dangerous to go forward in heavy weather when sailing on your own. It's one thing doing it on a crewed yacht where if you finish up in the water you have someone to come back and recover you but once you are separated from your boat and you are on your own you are in deep do do, personal GPS EPIRB or not.
Towing Dinghys. I don't do it unless I am doing a short hop in sheltered waters. My current boat is the first boat I have had with davits. They are great and make the dinghy problem almost disappear. I lost my last Zodiac when it inverted in relatively mild conditions and in spite of my best efforts I think it probably belongs to whoever found it now.
Anchor winch. This is a matter of personal choice but again my boat came with a nice electric winch. It just makes life that little bit easier when your on your own. Don't you love it when you buy a boat and someone has done most of the work for you.
We all know there are risks to long passages with overnight legs but people have been doing it for a very long time. It's a matter of managing the risks as best we can and in this day and age we have some nice technology to help us with that.
Another though for single handers, take something to do with you. I am an avid reader but my problem is getting hold of the books I like to read. With the internet and laptops/tablets et-all we have a lot of options. I think the internet is one very big plus for boaties. It allows us to do so much that we we not able to do so easily in the past.

My apologies to cisco in advance if the paragraphs and phrasing is not correct.

It depends on whether you are coastal or offshore outside the continental shelf.

Coastal solo sailing for legs of 24 hours or more is high risk. Sleeping for 15 minutes does not combat fatigue so you are just going to get more fatigued. I suppose it depends on what your risk tolerance is but coastal shipping, pleasure craft and those fishing boats are out to get you. Two handed is my minimum for long passages i.e. over 24 hours or 100nm. I'll also try to leave about midnight after a good rest so that I am alert until dawn, in that period where the biorhythms are at there lowest ebb. Once daylight comes most of us get a 2nd wind and are fine until night when we hit the fatigue limit.

Off shore it is a different game altogether. Crusoe's experience of getting within cooee of another vessel outside the continental shelf is extraordinarily unusual. I've done a fair bit of time out in deep ocean and my experience is that it is rare to see another vessel, even rarer to get within a few miles of it and for it to want the same 34 ft of water I am in almost impossible. In the English Channel or maybe in the Atlantic between Rotterdam and New York you have a problem, off NSW you don't.

On our recent trip to Lord Howe we did not see another vessel from outside the coal carriers off Newcastle (say 50nm offshore) on our run to Lord Howe and on return our first sighting was a Newcastle coal carrier. We left Lord Howe within an hour of 3 other yachts, didn't see them at all. I usually don't keep watches off the continental shelf and in heavy weather prefer to have the crew down below rather than exposed on deck.

Having said that, I enjoy being at sea at night and will stay on deck and even have a snooze on deck just cause I like it.

It's so great to have someone on here that knows everything about everything. A true keyboard warrior that has taken on the task of letting us all know about how much he knows.
Apologies if any of my punctuation or grammar was incorrect on this post.
Enjoy your sailing!

Before emotions it was just a simple Haha or a Lol!