I wanted to leave for Minorca early today, but getting the insurance for the boat took a while, then before you know it, it's siesta time. So I had to leave at 2:30 instead of 10:30. Then the wind died on me, so I found myself having traveled only 8 miles of the 33 miles to Ciutadella and it was already 6pm. If I continued, I'd have to enter the harbor in the dark. So I turned around instead and went back to Pto Pollenca. Minorca will have to wait another day.
I had lots of cascade failures involving the engine along the way, so turning back was a wise thing to do. In my younger days, I've done entries into the famous Mats Mats Bay in Puget Sound at 3am. But I'm older and wiser now.
BTW, the biggest safety feature on bigger boats is a giant inboard engine and a propeller that has been mounted so deeply under the boat that it would take a giant tsunami wave to make it come out of the water. The downside of that arrangement is the enormous drag. Some day, when we have fully submersible compact electric motors, we'll be able to drop the propeller out of the boat, have it do its thing, and then pack it back into the boat. Until then, my outboard setup is faster, but it can be pretty annoying when the prop comes out of the water in waves. On top of that, I lost the deadman retaining clip (this is a little red clip that you're supposed to attach to yourself so if you fall overboard, it'll cut off the engine -- I don't believe it has saved a single life, but at $25 dollars per retaining clip, I'm sure all together we've paid for far more than what juries often believe a life is worth, namely, around 4-6 million). I had to improvise a retaining ring from random stuff on board, but I hate improvised setups, they never work when you need them to.
People who study transportation safety talk about "failure cascades." In essence, no one ever does any single thing that is equivalent to "und zis is ze manouver wiz which I krash ze plane." The failures all start small and pile onto each other, e.g. the pilot parties too hard, has to sleep in the back, the plane loses a sensor, copilot switches to another sensor, pilot wakes up but isn't notified, then something else fails, etc. Today, I had blown through my time limit, the small engine problems were amplifying, and I didn't want to take the risk of having to go into a foreign harbor at night, with no engine, and tack back and forth between boats. I did note that I'd hit the harbor at 2am, so the other boat owners would be sleeping blissfully instead of awake and terrified of the little green boat with the big sails doing zig zags next to them.
I had lots of cascade failures involving the engine along the way, so turning back was a wise thing to do. In my younger days, I've done entries into the famous Mats Mats Bay in Puget Sound at 3am. But I'm older and wiser now.BTW, the biggest safety feature on bigger boats is a giant inboard engine and a propeller that has been mounted so deeply under the boat that it would take a giant tsunami wave to make it come out of the water. The downside of that arrangement is the enormous drag. Some day, when we have fully submersible compact electric motors, we'll be able to drop the propeller out of the boat, have it do its thing, and then pack it back into the boat. Until then, my outboard setup is faster, but it can be pretty annoying when the prop comes out of the water in waves. On top of that, I lost the deadman retaining clip (this is a little red clip that you're supposed to attach to yourself so if you fall overboard, it'll cut off the engine -- I don't believe it has saved a single life, but at $25 dollars per retaining clip, I'm sure all together we've paid for far more than what juries often believe a life is worth, namely, around 4-6 million). I had to improvise a retaining ring from random stuff on board, but I hate improvised setups, they never work when you need them to.
People who study transportation safety talk about "failure cascades." In essence, no one ever does any single thing that is equivalent to "und zis is ze manouver wiz which I krash ze plane." The failures all start small and pile onto each other, e.g. the pilot parties too hard, has to sleep in the back, the plane loses a sensor, copilot switches to another sensor, pilot wakes up but isn't notified, then something else fails, etc. Today, I had blown through my time limit, the small engine problems were amplifying, and I didn't want to take the risk of having to go into a foreign harbor at night, with no engine, and tack back and forth between boats. I did note that I'd hit the harbor at 2am, so the other boat owners would be sleeping blissfully instead of awake and terrified of the little green boat with the big sails doing zig zags next to them.
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