Time to go Back to Canvas and Hemp!
08 October 2015 | Victoria, Canada
Mark
With our return to Mexico less than 48 hours away, it sounds perfectly obvious that our laptop would pick this time to pack it in...
It's not that we don't have a hundred other things to do before we leave, now I also have to try and bring this essential piece of equipment back to life. Luckily I have some extremely knowledgeable friends to pester for advice.
When I first started sailing, and I'm not even that old, we didn't have any computers, and especially not computers on the boat that handled critical tasks such as navigation and communication.
Since then, high tech equipment has become common. As a self professed tech-geek I admit that I love the benefits that technology provides. I always know exactly where I am, and where my friends are. I can pick up the phone or send an email from anywhere in the world. Any document or manual that I could ever need is right there in digital form. It's great, as long as it works.
But, there is definitely a cost to this, besides the dollars involved. My first boat had really only one wire and that was from a battery to the running lights. Even then, the battery was usually dead, leaving me in the same boat then as I find myself now. However, back then, trouble shooting was quick, easy, and the problems were generally visible to the eye.
Now, with the immense amount of technology that we take with us, when something breaks, the diagnosis and fix can be extremely time consuming and difficult.
It's even worse when the problems happen in a remote area. I bet that there isn't a Mac store on Rangiroa Atoll?
Do I really want to back to the old day of wooden ships and iron men. No, not really. I'm too much of a crushing wimp for that one. But, at times like this, when I'm spending precious hours trying to fix technology, the good old days sound pretty darn good!