Phones on overnight watch — anyone actually use red-screen mode, or do we all just live with the squint?
Coming back from an overnight last month I noticed how much of the watch I spent staring at screens — plotter, instruments, phone for the weather, phone for the music, phone again because someone WhatsApped. Every white-screen flash seemed to wipe out 20+ minutes of night vision.
Tried the next passage with red-screen mode on the phone the whole watch (iPhone has it under Accessibility → Display Accommodations → Colour Filters → Red Tint, triple-click as a shortcut; Android has equivalents). Picked out unlit objects on the bow at distances I genuinely couldn't see when the cockpit had any backlit white in it.
For the overnight sailors — what do you actually do?
- Red-screen mandatory on every watch?
- Brightness floored on everything and live with it?
- Phones banished from the cockpit at night, plotter only?
- Or have you given up and accepted that every weather check torches the next half hour of night vision?
Anyone using a dedicated red-light head torch for chart or cockpit work — does it help?
Natalie