Wayne.B wrote:
On Mon, 12 Feb 2007 05:38:00 -0600, Geoff Schultz
wrote:

Anything more than 4 hours at night is too long.

I agree.

Not necessarily. After much experimentation, we found that what works
best for my wife and I is that I go to bed at dusk, leaving her on watch
until midnight when we swap. I then take over until she wakes up
(usually shortly after dawn). During the day, we're less formal about
it, but generally switch back and forth every 3 hours or so. Obviously,
this won't work for everybody, but for us it does.

We tried all sorts of different systems before settling on this. I was
OK with just about any of them, but we found that unless she gets a long
uninterrupted break at night, after a few days the sleep deprivation
starts really getting to her. You don't want to be on the same boat as
my wife when she's sleep deprived. It ain't pretty.