The other day I was reading an interchange between folks who simply did not understand the reasons behind the thought process in terms of boat, gear, and cruising choices of Lin & Larry Pardey. The logic (or lack of) seemed to be that no one should go to sea without currently available conveniences or should have done so way back before these things actually existed.
See what I mean about questionable logic?
The thing is, a lot of the stuff we take for granted are actually quite new in the grand scheme of things so to fully understand how and why Lin and Larry made their various decisions you have to jump back into your Wayback machine and and go back a ways...
Back in the late 70's and early 80's you'd notice that one of the main reasons folks had motors was not to make passages under power but to charge their batteries and keep their beer cold. As it happens, you would also notice that engines in boats (not unlike today) were less than dependable, often a source of expensive problems as were various charging systems that were motor-centric.
Electronics were expensive, undependable, and power hungry. How expensive you ask? Well I remember while building the first Loose Moose and looking at satellite navigation systems, the cheapest was right around $5000 and had rather feeble coverage of a lot of the places folks on boats sailed. As for things like EPIRBs, while they existed they did not work very well or transmit very far.
Electric lights of the 12-volt variety were both power hungry and dim so a good kerosene lamp (either for reading or as navigation lights) were as good or better...
Kind of puts a whole different tilt on those choices made by L&L all those years ago.
Back when we were cruising in the Med in the early 90's not all that much had changed. Most American cruisers we met had refrigeration (though I should add that most of those were constantly having them repaired), solar panels were just coming into more widespread use but most charging was still provided by an alternator, and people with motors always seemed to be working on them.
Fast forward to today and most boats are using electricity in volumes that would have made someone cruising in the 60/70/80/90's freak out. Electrics are better, charging systems are better and as a result we tend to take them for granted but even the best system still has an annoying habit of going all Murphy's Law on your ass from time to time.
Me, I like having a small fridge and an electrical system that allows me to have lights, watch DVDs, and suchlike. I certainly would not want or need to give them up in any scenario I could envision. That said, having sailed for a long time and been up close and personal with too many badly designed or built systems marketed to boaters, I don't have any illusions that anything electrical will necessarily work when I really need it to. So I always keep the 4th rule of VolksCruising in mind and am prepared to carry on without when it happens...
Back in the early 90's I remember hearing that Lin and Larry had not only added a couple of small solar panels, a battery, and some reading lights to Taleisin but they had also got a a small vacuum cleaner (yeah, the vacuum sorta/kinda surprised me). Of course, it made perfect sense because they were not anti-electricity zealots at all but simply folks who did not want anything on the boat they could not depend on and, as electric stuff on boats became better, they added a few things when they made sense and passed their need/want criteria.
A vacuum cleaner is actually a very needful thing aboard a boat...
Speaking of needful things, the other day I realized that I no longer had a copy of The Self-Sufficient Sailor. As it's a book I keep going back to I really need a new copy and since I'm not really a Luddite (with my Kindle backed up a half dozen ways) I'll be getting the Ebook.
