Min-Rant
084
PassageMaker
- November / December 2010
Service engine soon?
If that love note from your car doesn't raise your anxiety level maybe your computer's popular "Fatal Error" message will cause some reexamination of today's life direction. Recent car and computer problems have done so for me, with the expected reduction in the delicacy of my vocabulary. We all go through such bouts. It may be the your car, your computer or one of hundreds of widgets that seem increasingly to surround us. This recent episode, however, prompted my professional side to reflect on our overly technological boats.
Microprocessors have improved many things we use, making them more efficient, more adaptable and in most ways more reliable. At the same time, however, they have generally marginalized the ability of the tinkerer, the hobbyist, or the do-it-yourselfer to diagnose their failures or repair their ills. Frequently encountered maladies are even beyond the capacity of those who repair them for a living, leaving replacement of the part or the whole unit as the option. As annoying as that can be, it has become reasonable when dealing with your car or kitchen dishwasher. The same may also be true for boats traveling around the edges of oceans or waterways where help is nearby.
Offshore, however, is another matter. Now if the system is nonessential or it is one for which you can carry the necessary part or replacement units then enjoy the convenience offered. Beyond that, you should draw a baseline around systems necessary to sustain and keep you until you can reach safe harbor. Dividing the culprits is simple: things that provide propulsion, steerage, and protect survivability on one side and the rest on the other. Yes, cruising in comfort is always the goal but being held hostage by stray currents, lightning strikes and old-fashioned system failures should not be an option when you are cruising offshore.
But then that’s just
my opinion.
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