Needless Complication

So I was watching this video of a guy on a million dollar sailing cat. This boat had everything. He was getting ready to sail from Florida to the Bahamas. Nice, right?

Then he had a mechanical problem and was forced to postpone his trip. It took a bit to understand what the problem was. Basically, the boat would not shit into forward. Normally there’s a cable that runs from the transmission to the captain’s position in the cockpit. When a lever is thrown it moves the cable that shifts the transmission. Simple enough.

That was too simple for this expensive boat. Instead of a simple cable it’s a fly by wire system. The lever in the cockpit does not directly control the shifting. Instead it sends an electronic command down some wires to a special control box. Inside that box is a bunch of electronics and motors. It takes the electrical signal to shift and then converts into a command to electric motors that actually do the shifting.

They’ve replaced a simple direct linkage with electronics and motors. When the system breaks nobody can or knows how to fix it so the whole expensive unit has to be replaced. That sailor was stuck on the dock until a new part and boat mechanic could be found.

So I had to ask myself, why did they replace a simple mechanical system with a complicated device? The best I can figure out is that the shifting lever might have a much smoother feel to it. That’s it. That’s all I could see.

Of course, it’s not just on boats. Take most luxury cars and look how fast they depreciate. There’s a reason for that. As they age they have all kinds of computer/sensor/electrical issues. Hook a good mechanic’s scan tool up to one and there could be dozens of faults. Even with multiple faults, it could still be issues that don’t even flip the check engine light on. Of course, those small problems have a bad habit of becoming large problems.

I think off all these messed up complicated issues whenever anyone talks about self-driving cars. No doubt those will break down in interesting ways.

Fancy electronics, computers, and fly by wire have their place. That sort of thing makes sense in something like a fighter jet where a split second can be the difference between victory and death. Of course, they have the advantage of highly trained crews and the endless money supply of the full industrial political complex.

Lacking bottomless dollars and not having a fighter jet, I’m going to stick with simpler technology wherever it makes sense.

-Sixbears