NAVIGATE YOUR WAY HOME WITHOUT POWER

Electrical failure can put you in the dark when your instruments go down. A few traditional skills, and a good tool kit, can see you safely home

- Pete Goss

Electrical systems and electronics have become such an essential part of our normal lives that it’s hard to imagine life without them. Those good old days when there was a map in the glove box, awareness of the sun’s location and a dinghy compass glued to the dashboard of the family car are becoming a dim and distant memory. Amazingly it’s not even a memory for the younger generation who look at a map as if it’s an Egyptian parchment that requires mystical alchemy to decipher the direction of travel. The sophistication that has recently become the norm on standard yachts is quite extraordinary. Chart plotters, AIS, radar, wind instruments, Bluetooth windlass controls, chain counters, fridges, freezers, heaters, hot and cold running water, USB points, satcoms, underwater lights, electric outboards, water makers, even night vision systems. All wonderful bits of kit but of course, if we’re honest, none of them are essential.

KEEP IT SIMPLE

I know this thanks to our recreation of the voyage of the Mystery from Cornwall to Australia in a 37ft Mounts Bay Lugger, an adventure that took us halfway round the world and deep into the Southern Ocean where we were rolled upside down. Amazingly we had very few problems and none of them electric for there’s a reliable beauty in simplicity. If it’s not there to go wrong it won’t go wrong.