Date: 23 December 2014.
Electrical Field versus Compass (Captain Murphy)
Guest author Cap'n Mike Lauman on M/V Beachcomber.
This piece is for
The Writer's Block.
It's written by an online associate and took place in the early
'70's when Mike was in the USAF and stationed in Anchorage, Alaska. It
tells how Captain Murphy can become a part of your
crew when he's least expected.
Four of us were on my boss's boat. The four of us worked together and spent time on my
boss's 24'-25' cruiser. I don't even recall the make or much about
the boat except that with four of us (all pretty good size) on board
it was more than a little crowded.
This tale takes place in Prince
William Sound, circled below:
This map is from my 1943 Rand McNally atlas. J.
We'd launched from Whittier, AK on
a five day "bear hunting trip" which was actually more of a "let's
get away from work for a few days" trip.
We'd gone over to Montague Island then up to Hinchinbrook Island and
were just having fun. Sleeping on the boat, slow cruising during the
day, just the guys having a good time.
On our last morning we set a
course from Hinchinbrook Island back toward Whittier Inlet. (Red
star below, toward the green one on the far left.)
WHITTIER (#1) Alaska was where the
adventure started.
MONTAGUE ISLAND (#2) and HINCHINBROOK
ISLAND (#3)
We had plenty of time to make the
trip then load the boat on the trailer and drive the truck/trailer
onto the train to get out of Whittier.
This was back when there was no GPS. We had a
compass and charts to go by and we'd done fine all week. On the
cruise back to Whittier it started to rain. No problem, we turned on
the wipers. After a few hours we should have reached Whittier but
hadn't, and we kept seeing small ice bergs.
We kept going and started to get worried because
we realized two things--#1 we had no clue where we were, and #2 we
likely were going to miss the train.
After a bit the rain stopped and we turned off the
wipers. When we did that the compass swung wildly. Only then did we
realize that the wiper motor had set up an electrical field that
froze the compass at the heading it was set to when we turned the
wipers on. Now we were REALLY lost! We had no idea where we were or
how to get to Whittier.
We finally found a small fishing boat and asked
him where we were. He chuckled at our error and told us how to get
to Whittier. We ran on plane all the way back there, loaded the boat
in a hurry and barely made the train.
Lesson learned, and Murphy was released from duty!
We had no GPS (obviously), and no Loran, just the
compass and charts. Once we started seeing the ice bergs (we hadn't
seen any on the way out of Whittier) we knew we were way off course.
We had plenty of gas and food, so we weren't concerned about that.
Our only concern was missing the train and being late for work on
Monday. At that time they only ran one train a day through the
tunnel from Whittier to the highway to Anchorage. Now, there's a
highway through the tunnel.
If this even helps
someone else to be aware of what
an electrical field can do to a compass, it will be worth it.
The End.
© Mike on
M/V
Beachcomber, a 1995 Sea Ray 550 Sedan Bridge.
Regarding the Comments Section,
found at the end of every article:
-
Before you type in each block be
sure to hit the backspace key. Coding inserts a space in every box.
Your email address will come back as malformed unless you remove
that space. (You don't have to include your email address.)
-
The capcha is case sensitive.
|
COMMENTS:
© 2014, 2020, 2023
Categories:
Boats,
Characters,
Locations,
Security,
The Writer's Block
Bookbinding for Beginners ~
Previous Post
...
... Next Post
~
Windlass is
Necessary (for me)
|