Imagine, for a moment, that you are aboard a 56 metre luxury yacht anchored off Sicily. It is before dawn, there's some wind but the crew aren't worried, and you're coming up to take a look around. Suddenly, the yacht is knocked about as all the windows explode around you. Confused, startled, and scared, you run for a muster station, managing to get aboard a life raft moments before the yacht disappears beneath the waves. The whole event took longer to write up than it took to happen.

I've come across a few boats recently that, while they had tempting layouts and nice equipment lists, seemed to be sorely lacking in their ability to make real progress to windward.

Here on the Great Lakes, that's a deal breaker.

"Why", I'm sometimes asked, "do you specify electrical stuff that's bigger and more powerful than I had expected?"

It's a justifiable question. Batteries are expensive, heavy and bulky; why would you want any more of them than necessary? And what's with the multiple shutoff switches, subpanels, and other non-typical features of my electrical designs?