Troubleshooting: When It’s Worth It

by Andy Schell, SAIL magazine
I was on the 14:00-20:00 watch on our second day at sea, sailing the Farr 65 Falken across the Atlantic from Mindelo towards Barbados. The afternoon watch was blissfully shady with our westerly heading and downwind sailplan setup, with both sails spread wide out each side of the boat creating a perfect sun umbrella in the afternoon.

The axiom that no boat is ever truly ready for sea is absolutely accurate, and so that day early in the passage was a project day for me. The night before I’d spent my midnight watch sorting out why the watermaker was only giving us half the expected output (easy solution—clogged pre-filters). Now I wanted to figure out why the Watt & Sea hydrogenerator wasn’t putting out the amps I’d expect at 8 knots of boatspeed, and, more worryingly, why it was making a horrendous vibration, despite the new motor I’d installed just before departure.

I’ve long compared ocean sailing to space travel. We sailors are the closest that “normal” people will ever get to being astronauts—traveling across a breathtaking, vast, hostile environment with only ourselves to rely on. Often on the moonless nights of our crossing, with stars down to the horizon, the inky black sea beneath, and the red glow from the instruments, it was easy to feel like we were driving our own wind-driven spaceship across the galaxy. And, like astronauts, we must closely manage the systems on our little spaceship. While we might get some tips from Mission Control over the sat comms, it’s up to us to hands-on fix our problems. – Full report