I have no problem being called a sailing traditionalist - I wouldn't own a brigantine schooner if I wasn't. But that doesn't mean I haven't embraced some of the "modern technology" that has swept through the boating world like a hurricane over recent years, particularly in electronics. Undoubtedly, many of them have made boating much safer and more enjoyable, but they have also created a dependency on the "gadgets," themselves and in so doing ignors learning or using old methods that have served and many times actually saved sea-goers for centuries.
GLOBAL POSITIONING SATELLiTES.
Without doubt the greatest innovation over the past fifty years has been GPS, and there is no longer any need to spell the acronym anymore because everyone knows what it stands for. It might be said to rival the invention of the wheel and is used in a thousand other industries besides marine. But I still mark our paper charts every hour, and why? Simply because if power is lost to the chart-plotter it will conk-out. This happened from time to time when I first bought my boat because the electrical distribution panel was mounted low down, almost at floor level next to the chart table and anyone squeezing into the seat could easily brush against the panel and trip a breaker. I modified this along with the whole chart table by moving the panel to a much more accessible place where the breakers could not be accidentally tripped. This still left other reasons the plotter might quit, not least due to the stuff the boat floated on - seawater.
THE SEXTANT.
Only two satellites had been launched by the Americans when we bought our first sailboat and set sail south, leaving Old England by the lee for our great Mediterranean adventure. This meant a twelve-hour delay in obtaining a fix, which was not much use even on a boat traveling at only six knots. My wife and I therefore learned celestial navigation with our sextant. I would take the sights and Kati worked out the maths and marked the chart. After four days of crossing the Bay of Biscay we made landfall "on the nail" at Cape Finisterre on the westerly tip of Spain. We felt a great deal of satisfaction in this achievement and that same sextant still sits nearly 50-years later in its teak case on my latest boat Britannia.
There are other uses for a sextant, like calculating the distance off an object like a lighthouse, but all have been superseded by the miraculously accurate GPS with which we once navigated into the port of Oporto in Portugal in a very dense fog and never hit anything either.
But what would happen now to the great majority of boaters if their GPS navigation failed entirely on a seaward passage? I suppose they would pull out their mobile phone, on which a friend has all the charts of the eastern seaboard of the United States, plus GPS.
DEPTH GAUGES.
My boat's hull-mounted electrical depth gauge is non-functional at the moment due to growth over the transfucer. Britannia is also moored within the American Intercoastal waterway which is shallow nearly everywhere and very shallow in some places, so some form of depth gauge is necassary. There are two substitutes for when a depth gauge fails: a hand-held battery-powered device, a bit like an electric shaver that needs to be held in the water to give a reading. On Britannia this would need to be strapped to a boat hook to pass down over the four-foot freeboard. The other method is the age-old method, a lead line. This is very accurate when set up and used properly and can even tell you the nature of the bottom where you are about to anchor. And the advantage being - it's never subject to battery or power failure. Without any of these a boat is vulnerable to bottoming in any shallow water. A lead-line is really simple and cheap to make, but how many boats have one now, or owners who even know how to swing the lead, literally not figuratively.?
BILGE PUMPS.
Electric bilge pumps are sophisticated devices that can automatically empty a bilge when water gets to a certain level. They are ideal to install on a boat that is not regularly attended to, but the operative word again is "electric." The device can easily go wrong; the boat's batteries can run down, the pump can clog up, the float switch can fail to activate the pump, etc. As a backup Britannia has a high-volume diaphragm pump operated manually from the cockpit that empties a normal bilge level in a few strokes and is often used when we first get on the boat instead of using the batteries. I also fitted a manually activated 120 volt high volume sump pump that works from the 120 volt inverter or when the generator is on. A small bilge can also be emptied using a manual suction pump, but how many owners have these simple alternatives? Then again, there's always a bucket.
STEERING.
Most boats over a certain size have wheel steering, but there are different ways how the wheel operates on the rudder. The most common on modern small vessels is hydraulic that is the easiest to install by manufacturers and only needs an oil pump on the wheel leading by hoses to a ram on the rudder stock. Another method uses cables running from a cog and chain on the wheel spindle, through cables and pulleys to the rudder quadrant. Neither of these employs electricity except maybe a rudder position indicator gauge, but they are not by any means failure-proof. Hydraulic fluid can leak out of the pump causing the ram to fail over time. The pulleys that are needed to route a cable steering system can corrode or jamb, due to lack of oil and maintenance and result in stiff steering. The only remedy for total failure in either of these methods is a tiller that acts directly onto the rudder stock thereby overriding both hydraulic and cable steering, but how many boats have such a simple device as a backup?
AUTOPILOTS.
A hydraulic or electric autopilot needs an electric supply and sometimes a large battery drain if it is running for a long time like in a difficult sea. Hydraulic pilots use an electric pump to circulate the fluid to operate the hydraulic ram that moves the rudder. There will also be a rudder angle gauge and a control box also electrically powered. Britannia's is an amazingly accurate device and the course can be changed by degree at the push of a button, and it has never failed - yet. But that's because I treat my battery banks like a newborn baby, and I am very conscious of power consumption when the auto steering is on and the engine is not. This is not usually a problem with power boats where the engine(s) are used to move the boat and a big alternator is pumping power everywhere. Many cruising boats that ply the ocean trade winds will use a wind vane steering mounted on the stern that uses no auxiliary power whatsoever and keeps running forever, so long as there is a wind of course. There is another backup that needs no power whatsoever, except feeding from time to time - it's called a helmsman.
LIGHTING.
Britannia has LED lights, (Light Emitting Diodes), throughout all the 12-volt lights both inside and on deck - including the long-range navigation lights. These use less than one-quarter of the power of a regular bulb and are just as brigh so long as electrical power remains. I fitted a cruising boat I once lived on with auxiliary oil lamps in the saloon and sleeping cabins just as a backup in case of a total power failure, but these can be quite dirty if trimmed too high or lack a heat shield over the flame that can scorch the ceiling. They also require the storage of kerosene as fuel, but they are a nice backup when set up correctly. Then again - candles, properly set in fixed holders give a little bit of light.
CHARTS.
Paper charts are both cumbersom to store and to read in a cockpit or a small chart table. And who needs them anyway now that we have chart plotters the size of atlases that can zoom in to the smallest obstacle that needs a magnifying glass to read on a chart? The answer is me! On every ocean passage we make out comes the chart and is spread out over the saloon table and marked every hour - more or less - with coordinates from the plotter. This will give us a 'fix' if there is a glitch in the chart plotter and also shows how we are progressing overall on the voyage. Without such a record a passage becomes just a means to an end with nothing to remember it by. Our most recent passage, 530 miles from Cape Canaveral to North Carolina care of the Gulf Stream is now a framed chart on the wall at my home.
SHORE WATER SUPPL.Y
Shore water hose connections can be seen attached to many boats in marinas especially where people are living aboard, or for the weekend. A simple hose connected to the shore water pedestal has some neat advantages: The constant pressure saves using the boat's water pump and usually gives a greater and more even flow to faucets and showers. This saves the batteries and is silent. But what would happen if a water pipe breaks or a connection fails in the boat and you have forgotten to turn the water off at the hose when you go shoping or out for the night? The bilge switch would activate the pump, but the powerful inrush of water would probably overpower the pump and the water 
would rise with possible catastrophic results. This actually happened to me on a boat and it was only that we were gone for a few hours that she did not sink.
To prevent this happening again I devised an idiot-proof, (that would be me), backup, using a water shut-off solenoid and what is called a latching relay. A latching relay is just like a normal relay except it stays activated even when the source power is removed. The solenoid was fitted in the boat's inlet line and closes when the bilge switch activates it, then the latching part keeps it closed even when the bilge switch returns to open circuit. Simple and not only fool-proof but also worry-proof.
CONCLUSIONS.
When out on the water, especially the open ocean, things can go wrong with equipment that we rely upon - especially electrical devices. Electrics are not a happy companion with seawater and usually give no warning of attack, and unlike on the highway it is not possible to pull into a rest stop and call for assistance. Therefore it is just plain common-sense to have a backup available for the more important items just like it is common-sense to have two oars attached to a dinghy for when the outboard fails to start, breaks down or even runs out of gas. How far an individual takes this is a matter of choice and often based upon the length of passage, but the prudent owner who keeps a simple backup for important stuff might someday become the boat that makes it safely into the harbor. Just make sure your’s is not the one that doesn't.
BUCKETS, BILGES AND BACKUPS