Life Lessons from my Sailboat
Last week, we had no electricity because our sailboat’s inverter was broken. No lights, no space heater, nowhere to charge a phone. The prognosis for the inverter was grim, because we knew nothing about how the heck it worked or how to fix it.
We lived in the dark, literally and metaphorically.
To an untrained eye (such as mine), sailboats are a means of minimalistic living. They have small, ergonomic layouts. They are powered by the wind. They float like a rubber ducky.
While we boat shopped, I presumed that structural integrity is the main element of a good vessel. I’d knock on the hull and the deck and the cabin walls with my fist, pretending to know what I was looking for.
But when we moved aboard, I learned quickly that boats are highly complex systems that rely on the less perceptible principles of mechanics and chemical reactions. That within their fiberglass hulls lie boundless, time consuming puzzles.
The engine was the first enigma. Do we even need one? It’s a sailboat, after all. Why does it matter if it’s diesel or gasoline? Because it’s compression ignition? What does that mean? If it’s compression ignition, why does it need a battery? How does the battery charge? How does the engine charge the battery if the engine isn’t on? It doesn’t? What?
How does one rise from total mechanical ignorance to subpar mechanical understanding? By asking these annoying, redundant questions until some of the concepts sink in. By watching youtube videos and reading Nigel Calder’s Marine Diesel Engines.
The next enigma was the house battery that leaked hydrogen gas as we were sailing one day. I thought the smell of rotten eggs came from bilge, so my boyfriend’s panic took me by surprise as I dug out the bilge soap. Open the hatches! Don’t turn on the engine! The battery has gone bad, I learned. The gas is explosive, I cried. I chewed on my fleece collar and awaited detonation.
Prior to this experience, I thought little of batteries. In my mind, a battery was filled with green goop that became electricity with a flip of a switch. Who knew that there are lead acid batteries, lithium ion batteries, three cell and six cell, automotive and deep discharge? Who knew they need maintenance?
Apparently, everything on a boat needs maintenance. My initial contribution to boat maintenance was cleaning the bottom. I’d jump into the questionable marina water with a broom and hookah hose and scrub away the grime and barnacles. One day my boyfriend asked me to change the sacrificial zinc. The what zinc? Electrical currents in the water? Where I’m swimming?
Despite my associate’s degree in general science, electrolysis was new to me. Turns out electrolysis was happening not just under the boat, but inside too. Our thru holes were bonded with sacrificial copper wire, much of which was decaying into a beautiful turquoise dust. I asked if we should replace the bonding wire. Turns out, there are two types of boat people: those that bond their thru holes, and those that don’t.
To bond or not to bond — a shared enigma. A nod to the universal struggle to understand the complex organisms that are boats. A reassurance that bringing creature comforts onto the water is no easy task for anyone.
On a boat, understanding the basic principles of electricity and mechanics and physics is invaluable. But after days of studying AC to DC power conversion, we realized that the inverter situation was out of the realm of our comprehension and rationality. But before calling the electrician, we unscrewed front panel and found a broken fan. We replaced the fan, and the inverter worked again.
One year on a boat has taught me not just how things work, but that learning happens gradually, like a small leak in a thru hole, or like the slow, unseen electrolysis of a sacrificial zinc.
