MURPHY'S LAW RUNS STRONG ON THE OCEAN Fred Dyson – Dyson's Starboard View – Messing About in Boats   My father, a wise and experienced seaman, maintained that it was always a succession of problems that caused disasters at sea.  To him, Murphy's Law of boats was as follows, "On boats, everything that can go wrong will go wrong:         •  when the weather is snotty;       •  when the tide or wind is taking you onto a lee shore, onto the rocks, or into the path of the mother of all barge strings;       •  in the worst possible combination and order;       •  when the crew is sick, asleep, drunk, lazy, or jumped ship, and;       •  when visibility is zero and deteriorating."   He said most seaman handle the first emergency they encounter, but get sunk by the second or third problem in a row.   Poor seamen don't pay attention to the little problems that come up:  water building up         in the bilges that lowers your reserve buoyancy; loose cargo or gear that shifts at the wrong time; a valve left open; these are the little things that someone who is inattentive or stoned will neglect.   Some friends of mine nearly lost their vessel, the "Miss Juli," because of labels on food cans. They had food stored in the lazarette (a compartment below deck in the extreme rear of the vessel).  A leak around the rudder post caused the labels to come off the canned goods and then the labels plugged the bilge pumps and high water alarms.  Murphy was on board and on watch.   Because the bilge alarm floats were plugged, the crew of the 'Miss Juli" had no idea they were in trouble until the stem started to settle.  There was a seaway running and the decks were being swept regularly by breaking waves.  The crew could not cross the deck to access the lazarette to clear the pump screens.  To further substantiate the participation of Murphy, they had to slug it for seven hours before they could get out of the wind behind an island.   They did everything they could to stay afloat; they pumped aft fresh water tanks overboard and transferred all fuel forward.  They tried to back-flow the lazarette bilge pumps but couldn't because the valves that   needed to be turned were on deck and being swept by the waves.  They made it finally with stressed nerves, white knuckles, and tight orifices.   The crew of the "Miss Juli" were professionals, and they made some changes for the future: no cardboard boxes or canned goods in the lazarette; better screens for the pumps and alarms; all valves are now accessible in a storm; and having a hatch from the aft hold into the lazarette became standard practice on their vessels.   If you are going down to the sea in boats, spend some time thinking through what combinations of problems you might get into and how you would respond.  My father was good at this and ingenious in finding solutions.  On his last tug, if the steering system broke, he would put a seven-foot-long "box wrench" he had made on the nut on top of the rudder post, using it for a tiller and thus making it home.   He had welded an eye on the end of his new "tiller" arm, and he could rig a block and tackle to port and starboard (left and right) to give him some leverage.  He also followed his common practice of putting valves on the main engine water pump that would allow him to use that pump as an auxiliary bilge pump.   Does that all sound a little paranoid?  Maybe, but most seafarers have gotten in trouble with failed equipment and have a soul-felt dread of dying in cold salt water.  Besides, Dad was the kind of guy who would wear belt, suspenders, and then carry some safety pins in his pockets.                               TOP          MESSING ABOUT IN BOATS          HOME