Check the Diesel
When ignorance isn't blissful
This is Clouds Form Over Land, weekly writing about resilience, imperfectionism, and our relationship to the earth.
For most of history, tides ebbed and flooded in unpredictable ways.
That bulge of water is constantly pulled by our old companion, the moon, and heightened by the sun.
Some locations have a tide cycle once a day, others twice, and others depend on the day. The tidal range in the Bay of Fundy is 16.3 meters or 53 feet, while the Caribbean, Mediterranean, and Gulf of Mexico vary less than a meter between high and low.
Greek astronomer and explorer Pytheas discovered the connection between tides and the moon in 330 BCE on a voyage to the British Isles, where the rise and fall are more pronounced. The Yolngu people of modern-day NW Australia also noted the connection, and created myths about the moon filling and pouring water onto the earth. Medieval Europeans looked to Muslim astronomers for understanding when Latin translations became available in the 12th century.
Galileo mocked lunar theories in 1616 and pointed to the rotation of the earth instead. Descartes, Newton, Bernoulli, and others worked at it and Laplace cracked the case in 1776 with differential equations accounting for friction, resonance, and natural periods of ocean basins. Lord Kelvin, George Darwin, and A.T. Doodson furthered these equations in the 1800s into a system we still use today. Kelvin created an analog computer in 1872 which is really worth a look. Similar models were used to predict the tide on D-Day but were later replaced by electronic computers.
I wonder if these individuals and their teams felt a sense of certainty when they arrived at incremental steps in understanding. I wonder if they felt connected to those who pondered celestial bodies before or after their brief time here. Did it feel grand or mundane to realize the moon was guiding the high water mark?
Nowadays, NOAA publishes tides two years in advance using satellite data and near-perfect location information of the sun, moon, and earth. You can go a little cross-eyed watching this animation of tides worldwide.
We experienced a twist of the tides on our last passage in the Pacific. On that side of the Canal, the tidal range is 18 feet, and on the Atlantic side, only two feet.
For forty hours or so, we fought our way around Punta Mala, reaching top speeds of three miles per hour. The wind and tidal current were aligned and hitting the boat on the nose. The water seemed to be perpetually ebbing out of the Bay of Panama, around the point, and into the Pacific. In order to make progress under sail, we need at least a 45-degree angle between where the wind is coming from and where we’re pointing to create lift and pull us along. This angle exposes a wider profile of the boat to the friction of the water and allows the current more grip, pushing us backward. We turned the engine on to make headway.
Our fuel tank is replenished through a port outside on deck, poured from jerry cans of diesel lashed down amidships. On our separate shifts, we wondered how we would refuel in such wild and wet conditions with salty air and spray blowing over the bow all around us. A few drops of water in the fuel can shut down an engine and as waves continued to crashed relentlessly over the bow, rolling down the side decks to the aft of the boat, keeping the water out seemed impossible. The fuel gauge is located on top of the tank, visible through a clear panel clouded with age, on the cockpit floor. This requires peering on hands and knees with a headlamp to get a proper reading. For a while, both of us separately wondered at how much fuel we had burned so far, until one of us checked at the four-hourly shift change and read two-thirds full. We were both alert and knew the weather would be steady and difficult for a while, so I scampered forward to retrieve a jerry can, and we played gas station attendant on the high seas.
This may seem like an awful lot of fossil fuel talk for a supposed environmentalist traveling on a sailboat. I suppose my excuse is that the suffix “-ist” means “of or pertaining to”, and we certainly felt of the environment while trying to make it back to safe harbor.
The mood calmed with the knowledge of how much fuel remained. We bashed on into the waves and eventually shut down the engine and made slow or no progress to save fuel. It’s difficult to record these conditions in the log, but the little snippets bring it all back from our comfortable seats in the future.
“Check the diesel” has become shorthand onboard for just doing that needs doing, or some other manner of staring down the truth. Perhaps similar to “eating the frog”, but with the real-life experience of checking compared to the imagined horribleness of eating amphibians.
“Checking the diesel” has also been checking the propane and checking the water level in the tanks and checking the mystery produce at the back of the fridge. The saying goes for Googling simple questions that we would have no way of knowing, like “US tourist visa length in Colombia” or “average temperature in Florida in March”.
It seems silly to share this moniker for determining one’s limitations, but sometimes in the heavy winds and big seas of life, it gets tricky to get out of your seat and check. To face reality and end the swirl of speculation. To see how full the tank is and determine how far you can go.
There is so much more knowledge and certainty at our fingertips than Phytheas had in 330 BCE, yet he uncovered a truth by observing. Lord Kelvin created a machine that at first only accurately told him what he already knew by separate measure—the tide at the present moment on the shore—so that he might predict an hour, day, month, or a year later. Or so that someone else someday could figure it out.
Check the global emissions map from Climate TRACE. Zoom in on your local area and explore nearby emissions sources. Share the map.
Take stock of your pantry and use up some odds and ends this weekend. Search for recipes with ingredients that have you stumped to make it fun.
Check your diesel, which could mean a bank account or PTO or unopened mail.
Pay attention to the ebbs and floods of your life and the systems around you.
Written in the spirit of not letting what we can’t do get in the way of what we can.
Did you try any of these? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.
Another great dispatch. Sometimes I wait and then binge a few at a time so I feel like I am there with you longer.
I shared the global emissions map with my coworkers to spark conversation.