K.I.S.S.
It had been a quiet night at anchor and I was looking forward to getting under way. I pulled the cover from the windlass motor and removed the stop, turned on the bow hose and stepped on the deck switch. Nothing happened. I stepped on the switch again. Nothing happened.
Fearing the prospect of hand-hauling a 44-pound anchor and 125 feet of chain, I stomped on the switch again. Zip.
Thirty years of cruising have taught me that a first instant diagnosis in a moment of trouble with systems – in this case a failed windlass – usually is wrong because it naturally focuses on catastrophic probabilities and overlooks the simple things that can go wrong.
Nevertheless, for a moment I couldn’t control myself and quickly imagined a failure of the 12VDC windlass motor and began wondering how I would repair/replace it here in the semi wilderness of central British Columbia. Experience kicked in quickly and I went looking for other windlass system components that would be simple to fix. I checked the windlass circuit breaker in the 12-volt panel. It was on.
There’s a solenoid in the windlass circuit. It was working. I crawled over the huge V berth in the bow and jammed head and shoulders into the chain locker with a volt meter that told me there was power to the switch. Okay, I thought, there’s not a spare switch on board but I probably can wire around it. Wait a minute, the flag man in my head urged, let’s take a look at the switch.
Back on deck, I unscrewed the cover plate and removed the switch. I depressed the pin sticking out of the end of the sealed switch body. The windlass motor began moving chain. What the heck is wrong?
Finally, I saw what happened. A lock nut fixes the switch body so the pin sticks up into the cover on deck and makes a contact when someone steps on it. The lock nut, I noticed, was loose. I fiddled with it, got it tight and in position. Cover plate back on, I stepped on the switch. It worked. Simple fix.
There’s nothing original in this approach. Aristotle expressed it in a philosophical discussion centuries ago when he said something like this: “Entities must not be multiplied beyond what is necessary.” William of Occam, an English philosopher and Franciscan monk, rephrased it in the 14th Century in his principal of parsimony: the simplest of two or more competing theories is preferable. His view today is known as Occam’s Razor. Our contemporaries might say “keep it simple, stupid.”
Neither Aristotle nor Occam was thinking about boat systems – they were on a higher intellectual plane – but the concept applies.
There’s a corollary here, too: Before one can consider all possible competing theories in deciding how to fix a balky windlass, for example, one needs to know how the system works. That’s not too difficult on my 30-year-old boat, where an understanding of the basics – wiring, plumbing, cooling, fuel delivery – is sufficient. In almost 20 years of ownership I have most of it figured. On newer and larger craft with many more and richly complicated systems, it is a huge challenge.
At times, this approach leads one to no other conclusion but that a catastrophe has happened on your watch. I heard about a vacationing boater whose hydraulic system had failed. It powered steering, the anchor windlass, stabilizers. He was stuck. After working through a chain of possible minor problems – and finding that none was in play here – he finally concluded the problem was in the pump itself. He faced a long wait for a replacement. I didn’t hear the final chapter, but for his sake I hope it was the pump.
That leads to the issue of carrying spares. Normally, I wouldn’t expect cruisers to carry an extra hydraulic pump. But if I were heading across the Pacific Ocean, I likely would have one in a locker. A few days ago we met a couple on a recently purchased sailboat. The single marine toilet failed and there were no replacement parts on board. They had been waiting several days for delivery of the needed part. Graciously, the marina operator found them a slip a few steps from the dock bathrooms. This was in Campbell River, B.C., a busy port community on Vancouver Island. It’s a great place to provision, buy fuel, visit galleries and there’s an interesting museum to explore. But it must have been disappointing to have a sailing vacation consumed waiting for a part that should have been aboard.
Spares are like insurance. With luck and care you never need them.
For a flash of time one morning – when the starboard engine refused to crank – I imagined the need to unpack the new starter that’s stowed in a parts cabinet below decks.
Starting my Ford Lehman 120s is a three-step process. Switch the main circuit breaker to on, turn the key lock (installed by a previous owner and I still wonder why) and then punch the starter button. I heard a relay click. And that was all. Borrowing from my computer’s occasional need to be rebooted, I turned all the engine switches off and then went through the start-up process again. Rebooting may work for a computer, but it did nothing for the Ford starter.
I took the ladder into the engine room and asked Ellen Kaiser, my cruising partner, to push the start button. A relay on the forward ER bulkhead clicked. Okay, I thought, there should be 12 volts at the starter. A solenoid sits atop the starter and Ellen pressed start again while I touched the solenoid hoping to feel a click that would tell me it was/was not working. I almost sat down in surprise when the starter motor spun to life, began cranking and the engine started. My after-the-fact diagnosis: a mounting bolt had loosened and the solenoid had lost its grounding connection.
One more anecdote proving that the simplest answer is best – if you understand a system well enough to know all the possible answers. Quadra has a single head and a VacuFlush system that has been 99.9 percent reliable. Recently, however, the vacuum generator pump refused to shut down. This happened once years ago and I wound up dismantling and cleaning the pump. Ugh. Because I knew how the system worked I first looked to a simpler and nicer possibility – cleaning the seal at the base of the toilet bowl. That worked by eliminating an air leak. No sweat or mess.
Aristotle was right.