First off, no, we aren’t in the midst of a major
Problem. But I have been thinking about
what we have “trova’d”, and this issue of dealing with problems is one of them.
So, while we aren’t in the middle of dealing with a major Problem,
they are pretty much incessant in this way of life. While back in Florida and on our way off the boat to a
meeting, I went to shut down the generator and it wouldn’t turn off. Most folks expect machinery to not start, but here we were in a time crunch
and the motor wouldn’t shut down.
Problems (with a capital ‘P’) are like that – they are
always new-to-you and occur when you need the system that is misbehaving. Which is only natural since, a) if you have
already been through it, it isn’t such a big deal, and b) if you didn’t need
whatever it was that just failed, you wouldn’t have found it to be broken!
But what did I do about the generator? I thought about whether we could just leave
it running until we came back: not an option since we were to be away much of
the day and there was no load on the generator, a bad thing for it. Hmmm… how to shut down a diesel motor when
the push-button switch doesn’t do it? I
pulled out the manual and reviewed the circuit diagram, found the actual switch
on the electrical panel, and checked it’s function: nope, it was working
correctly so no easy way to command a shut-down by by-passing the switch. I
thought through what motors need, fuel and air and combustion…
Next idea - kill the fuel supply: tried that two different
ways, and it didn’t work, seemed that the motor was able to suck fuel backwards
in the fuel-return line. Tried choking
off the air inlet with a rag, added more rags, a plastic bag: nope, the motor was
running badly now, but still running and sucking in air from somewhere. No easy
way to kill the combustion in a running diesel …
Jennifer in the mean time had reached out to a knowledgeable
cruising friend: he explained how to find the shut-down throttle solenoid and told
us to manually trip it. While the motor
was running. Of course! Easy!
Reach in past the whirring parts and push on a gizmo I didn’t know. But it made total sense, that’s how diesels
are shut down. In the end it was tricky
but it worked. Elapsed time: 20 minutes
and we made it to our meeting. The root
problem is also still not resolved and we will have to address it when we get
back to the boat from our holiday travels.
What I didn’t do was let myself get worked up about it. When we started out cruising, everything felt like an emergency and we
semi-panicked whenever things failed.
Now we know a lot more, but even with things where we have no clue, we
actually do have clues. We have learned
to stop, think it through, fight down the panic, and get on with it.
I learned the expression that is the title of this post from
an Apollo astronaut in his TED talk about dealing with life in space. It was his theme – that there are no problems
so bad that you can’t make them worse.
In the case of spacecraft, nearly everything is life-threatening so you have to learn how to deal rationally
with threatening situations. It only
feels that threatening on a sailboat, it is really nothing like as dangerous. But you can still make things worse. Like possibly sucking fuel backwards risking
contaminating the injectors, maybe. But
I had anticipated that possibility and consciously took the risk, I was not
just grabbing at the first possible fix.
Bottom line is that panic never got you anywhere except into
more trouble. Indulging in panic is
really expensive. And worse, like
sea-sickness, it is infectious.
What do I do about it?
That really is the right question. To paraphrase an old quip “never look
at the panic, it only encourages it.”
The next time you are faced with a serious problem and you feel panic
pushing in from the edges, just push it back, then face the problem you have to
face, and get on with it.
Easier said than done, of course. To get more practice, all you have to do is
buy a boat.
