Out Of Gas
The 2002 space-western series Firefly only survived for only ten episodes, yet the fandom endures more than two decades later. Episode eight, “Out of Gas”, is a masterclass in storytelling woven through a deceptively simple plot: the ship suffers a catastrophic system failure, and the crew is left adrift in deep space without life support.
What makes this episode brilliant is the banality precipitating the crisis. A dilapidated ship and a crew without the means for repairs (let alone maintenance) are all that is required for mortal peril. No laser battles, no alien saboteurs or space anomalies, just the reality of a shoestring budget. The oscillation between trust and betrayal with aging machinery is a singular experience; if you have ever owned a car that repeated left you stranded on the side of the road you can relate. Each time a component fails you become acutely aware of the myriad other parts well past their useful lives, and how massive an undertaking it would be to make the vehicle truly “reliable”. You are forced to arbitrarily decide which actions must be taken to restore your trust, knowing they are often more performative ritual than meaningful repairs. I pity people that have always owned reliable vehicles and had the means to maintain them; learning to reconcile a no-win situation (I can’t afford to replace this leaking head gasket) with required faith (I must trust this car will make it work tomorrow if I am to keep functioning) is a threshold of human independence. “Out of Gas” illustrates beautifully the crushing blow when that faith is betrayed, when the situation turns on you not because of any external failing or attack but because of the choices you were forced to make.
I sailed into Windmill Point the first week of June with high hopes. The trip down the bay from Maryland had been largely successful - one night spent on anchor reviving the house bank from a bad BMS configuration, a slow limp the last 40nm with a failing V-belt, but nothing overly catastrophic. Defiant had proven capable, at least enough so to set sail. That distinction, of a restoration project turned sailing vessel, has consumed the last two years of my life; the turning point was suddenly well in sight.
My final “underway” checklist was short. I resolved that any item met with friction would be deferred to the next stop or underway, regardless of how critical it seemed. The inertia of that voyage carried into the first week of final refit. The first week I installed the new staysail furler, repaired and re-rigged the jib sheets, replaced the V-belt and stocked several replacements. I flushed the very dirty fuel system and replaced filters, lined the engine bay with soundown foam (quieting the cabin almost 20db). I took my teak “pirate” wheel and spare pedestal axle to a machine shop to have it fit, I took my staysail to a sailmaker to have it fitted with new luff tape so it could be mounted on the new furler. I finally gave up on the HVAC guy that had installed (but never completed) my icebox refrigerator conversion kit, and set an appointment with a local outfit that came highly recommended. Things were well underway. I even took a day to mount the bow name boards, getting the big wood slabs out of my cabin and making Defiant feel just a little more complete.
June 20th was a Saturday - launch day. The new HVAC guy was coming on the 19th, the staysail would be ready the same morning. I would do a quick provisions run Friday night, then set sail at first light. I spent that last week tying up loose ends: I cancelled my storage unit, prepped my truck for long-term parking, did all the laundry, and filled up fuel and water tanks. I felt good. I felt vindicated. As any seasoned reader knows, this is the part in the story where things go terribly wrong.
Friday morning started with a series of disappointing calls and texts. My sail was not started yet, but it should be ready no later than the 26th 😠. The HVAC guy was very backed up, and would have to move our appointment to next week as well. OK, fine - fate punishes any sailor who sets a schedule. So I relegated myself to relax and wait out one more week trapped on the island - I was still just seven short days away. At which point my septic system imploded.
The trouble started with a simple error code: electrode overload on my sanitation unit. I had troubleshot with the help from the crew at Raritan Engineering in NJ before, undoubtedly the best in the business and I can’t praise these guys enough. We started with a salt pump replacement, then escalated to a $1700 electropack swap. The cost of the part, while painful, was not my greatest concern - it was the process of servicing the unit. You see, my past self had hard-plumbed the box into a cavity that made servicing nearly impossible; these units typically require a service every three to five years, and I had convinced myself that I would be doing the bathroom renovation long before then - so this unserviceable situation was “only temporary.” What this meant in practice was 3 gallons of effluent (liquid human nastiness) and several feet of PVC filled with the same, all with no service ports or clean out. The unit itself was cemented into the old blackwater chamber with bulkheads tight to three sides - no room to get in a wrench and open the lid. The final dump hose was sealed onto the box and had to be cut away - no threaded connections or couplings. This was a bad, bad situation.
I’ll spare the details in case you are eating. Extracting the unit involved a hacksaw and several of the most vomit-inducing days of my adult life.
I installed the new electropack, serviced the unit as best as I could. I set out to commission my septic back to working order the right way, fully serviceable with clean outs, so this would never happen again. Doing things the right way is hard (that’s why we don’t always do it); every miss-measurement sent me back to the hardware store (45 minutes each way). I took off from work, thinking a full day dedicated to the problem would get me over the hump. It did not. Boat spaces are, understandably, very cramped, and that leaves very little room to maneuver PVC joints, couplings, 2" hose barbs etc.
After several days of struggle, the system was complete and ready to test. I filled the toilet with a gallon of fresh water, flushed…
Water sprayed from the edges of the sanitation unit, as the new seal I had installed was failing. tiny drips ran from the threaded fitting on the toilet itself, which I would later learn was damaged during the initial removal process and would now never seal on its own. After a week of sweating over vile plumbing in the space of a cramped bathroom stall, I still had nowhere to poop.
🧊Meanwhile, Back At The Refrigerator
The new HVAC guy had arrived; he rescheduled Monday, then Tuesday, then Wednesday, and finally spent the day aboard on Thursday. He found three leaks left by the previous HVAC guy, patched them, then ran a vacuum with a dryer for several hours to try and remove all the atmosphere/moisture that had seeped into the compressor. He gassed up the system, we turned it on, the compressor and the fan kicked up… and then nothing happened. No cold, no pressure change.
The new HVAC guy’s theory was that solder or atmospheric gunk had collected in the capillary tube in the chill plate, preventing the R134a from “kicking” (changing from liquid to gas) which is where the coldness is made. I asked how we fix it, he said we don’t. The cost to repair it would be far more than the cost to replace the system 😿. I messaged the manufacturer, and he concurred with the HVAC guy - letting the system sit for three months with open leaks most likely proved fatal. I needed to order a whole new system, another $2k hit.
I then learned that every. single. manufacturer of icebox conversion kits like mine was at the tail end of a supply chain crisis. Kits were backordered. Parts were backordered. If you needed a compressor or a chill plate, you were going to get on the list and wait until the next expected shipment, sometime in July. End of story.
⛵ And Meanwhile, Back At the Bow
The staysail was cut and stitched beautifully, exactly how I wanted it. They had used up the last of my extra Sattler sun cover material, another small win. I couldn’t wait to get it home, run the new sail up the forestay… and discover that it did not remotely fit.
I have gone over the mistake in my head a dozen times, and I still do not know how the measurements became so mangled. My best guess was that I confused the measurements I sent the furler company (which run the full length of the stay) with the ones for the sail maker (which should have only run the length of the furler, about 2 feet shorter). The sail would not even roll up to mount it. When I did mount the top half, hanging like a tablecloth below the furler drum, the clew of the sail was piled on the deck several feet below the lifelines - it would never fly this way.
🚽 Things Fall Apart
It was now Tuesday, June 30th. Defiant looked like she had been robbed - all the stowed kitchen items spread across one couch from the failed icebox work, all the towels, linens, toilet paper, and plumbing supplies from the bathroom covering the other. The bathroom was shut down from the repairs - no toilet, no sink, no shower. The temperature was near 100°F and I had an electric cooler the size of a child’s lunchbox to stow anything perishable. A very expensive new sail was stuffed in my aft bedroom instead of powering my vessel. In just a few days my trust in her as a seaworthy vessel had collapsed. It wasn’t as palpable as defeat, because there was no adversary to face; she hadn’t been crippled by a storm or taken damage escaping pirates. I was surrounded by the consequences of choices I had made. These weren’t necessarily bad choices, as one might naively assign any choice that begets a bad outcome; but they worked to erode confidence in all the thousands of similar choices I have made aboard Defiant and question my faith in her (and myself) as a whole. Remember that while this ship is torn to bits and dysfunctional, she is also still my home. This means trying to solve broken plumbing without a place to shower at the end of the day. It means trying to fix refrigeration lines in the heat without any cold drinks. The damaged state compounds - not only is your system broken, but the lack of that system makes you more tired, more run down, and less capable of fixing the broken system.
C’mon, Really?
The very last straw was this:
A friend sent me this photo as she passed Defiant from behind. A perfect ending to a perfect week.
The Redemption Arc (Hopefully)
There was to be no launch in June. I had resolved to make due without refrigeration and without a staysail for a short while. I could patch up, and re-fasten, and get by. But without a working toilet, the ship was going nowhere - and I was just too tired and too beaten down to attempt another system rebuild.
🗺️ There’s A Plan
I ripped out the sanitation system (again a long, messy job, but nothing like the first time), packed it into my truck along with the misshapen staysail, and drove north to Philadelphia. Airbnb’s are cheap here and I know people, and it serves as a retreat point when the front line gets too ugly. If I am to course correct I need to do it from a place with a working toilet.
🚽 Septic: Calling In Reinforcements
I packed the entire sanitation system and shipped it up to New Jersey, where Raritan will go through the unit and service it properly, certify that it is 100% working and sealed, then ship it back down to the boat at Windmill Point. This still leaves the leaking toilet threads, which I will either 3M 4200 shut or engineer a more elegant solution - per the Raritan team, I have about a week to figure it out.
🧊 Refrigeration: Waiting Game
The manufacturers claim they will have new systems in stock the first week of July (aka now). I check all the big suppliers every day, and will order a replacement system as soon as it is available. If the refrigeration system is available before the septic is done, that gets shipped to Windmill Point and installed before I set sail. If not, it gets shipped to Annapolis and I’ll pick it up there a week or so after I head out.
⛵ Staysail: Annapolis Bound
There is no time to get any shop to measure and re-cut the staysail to fit down in Virginia; so I’ll stow the sail until I get to Annapolis, then find a sail maker in town to come aboard, measure, and cut it right. This is going to be very, very expensive, but the alternative could trap me at the dock for months. Better to go, especially in this case.
🔨 Whatever Else
The name board most likely just needs a replacement nut and a better lock washer. I am sure a few more things will fall apart before I can get off that dock for good, and we’ll address them the same - fast, simple, make note and keep moving.
Yes, Defiant failed to break free in June. It took a near supernatural stack of events to prevent us from setting sail, and we are not out of the woods yet. But she is not done yet, either. And July has just begun.