‘If it can go wrong, it will go wrong, at the worst possible time and with the worst potential consequences.” That’s pretty much Murphy’s Law in a nutshell.
Years ago I was flying our little Van’s RV-6 sporty airplane back from Yuma, Arizona to Phoenix after spending a day with my folks. Like lots of retirees they had elected to visit Algadones, Mexico to get some dental work done. Interesting place – American trained dentist lived in the US, all the fancy parts such as crowns, bridges and implants came from the US, just no big liability insurance so it’s affordable. There’s something like 500 dentists in a square mile down there. Anyway, they had a hotel for several days, but I had flown down for the day to help them get accustomed to wandering around the South side of the border. After a dinner out they returned me to the airport and I launched back towards Phoenix, about 160 miles to the Northeast.
here’s not much but desert and vast tracts of farmland along that route, and that night there wasn’t any moon either. I was tooling happily along at around 150 knots over a vast area of blackness, enjoying the lights of the Phoenix metro area about 50 miles away when suddenly the alternator decided to up and die. Well there I was whipping out my checklist, doing what’s called “load shedding” since now the little engine start battery was being rapidly depleted. Plenty of things could get shut down until I was about to enter the high traffic Mode C veil airspace, things like navigation lights, transponder and VHF radio. Just before arriving at the airspace boundary I switched things on, contacted the control tower and flipped on the landing light just before touchdown. No big deal, but why did the stupid alternator have to fail at the worst possible time?
We’re underway from Mo’orea to Tikihau right now, about 173 nautical miles. It’s important to arrive at the pass with the right tidal conditions so we departed 6 pm Monday afternoon and we should arrive around 6 am this morning. Last night after Isabel had retired a squall forced me to reef the main, an interesting exercise while single-handing. About the time I had that done the autopilot sounded an alarm and decided it didn’t want to play nice any longer. Lost the wind data, not happy, see ya later. Naturally this happened after a big wind shift from the squall and of course while we in a danger close situation with Marlon Brando’s old resort island of Tetiaroa, now a lee shore. Oh yeah – at least the radar was still working so I could see another, larger squall just ahead. Lovely.
Sorting out the wind data and autopilot malfunction requires turning power off to the marine electronics and autopilot bus for about a minute to allow all the little capacitors to empty their bellies, what in the helicopter flight test business referred to as taking the aircraft down to “cold steel”. Goodbye radar, goodbye chart plotter. Hello “it was a dark and rainy night”. Hand steering to the compass isn’t a big deal, but it’s a few steps down the companionway to the circuit breakers to execute the power reset. Time for the boat to wander off course in squirrely wind with Tetiaroa looming to port. Not really dangerous, but totally annoying. At least the backup Raymarine wheel type autopilot can be used as a friction device so the heading doesn’t change too rapidly unless the boat is out of balance, but that’s another topic for another cup of coffee.
Anyway, after a couple of tries it worked out and only happened once more during the second squall. Isabel needed her crew rest so it was on me to sort it out alone, then be prepared to brief her when her turn to drive came at 3 am. Funnily enough it hasn’t happened again on this passage but once we’re settled in a calm anchorage you can bet Isabel will be winching me in my bosun’s chair to the mast top to see whattup.
Stupid Murphy.
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