Redundancy

The fog that greeted our
departure from San Francisco

Half Moon Bay, CA
September 15, 2009
Sitting here on the hook (that would refer to the anchor or free place to stay tonight) in Half Moon Bay. We had an interesting discussion about redundancy. It is an important concept on a boat. If something fails, what is your back-up. If you get a leak or hole in your cold plate, what do you have for back-up refrigeration? There is a rule that all cruising sailboats follow: every thing you bring on to the boat must have at least two uses. For example, an awl is not just a tool for punching holes in heavy fabric or leather, but it is also and almost more importantly an ice pick.
We came down the coast from San Francisco in fairly dense fog using our radar and our new fog horn that was installed when we had the rig out last winter. We got into the harbor here and Bryce said that we really didn’t need a fog horn because he could use his saxophone to make the foghorn. Then, listening to the fog horn here in the harbor, he declared that all he would have to do was play a low "D". Just to prove it, he pulled out his instrument and played that note. It turns out it was low "E" – pretty impressive!!! So, now we have a back-up system for the fog horn.

Our back-up fog horn