Articles about Engines and Mechanics

At a recent dock party, I overheard one captain lament, "Every time I turn on the hot water, the boat turns right!" His problem seemed simple enough—an unshielded wire from the hot-water pressure pump must run too close to the autopilot fluxgate compass—but the implications were anything but. I thought, "If this happens to him every time, I can deduce that the vessel is always on autopilot, there are no manual water pumps, and no one on board suffers a cold shower. More important, the complexity of the boat systems is clearly beyond his grasp." When it comes to electronic equipment, my.....