My can opener didn’t always have vice grips attached. Once upon a time, it had a plastic handle. And then one day last December, the handle simply fell off. The plastic hadn’t broken – the metal underneath had rusted away. And so, in fine cruiser fashion, I improvised.
Not to be cranky, but metal on a boat is a pain in the neck. If it is metal, it will corrode. Unless I build everything out of Platinum, the salt water is going to get to it eventually.
Our hull is made of Aluminum. That’s great if you plan to ram into a tree trunk and not sink, but it has a downside: our hull wants to be a battery. In the galvanic series for stagnant saltwater, Aluminum sits at position number 34 of 39. That means that, in salt water at least, Aluminum is a giver. Aluminum acts as a sacrificial anode for the 33 metals sitting above it on the list. And guess what? I don’t want my hull to be so generous. Keep your electrons, I say! Don’t accept that current! Only Uranium, Cadmium, Beryllium, Zinc and Magnesium sit down below Aluminum. And as I somehow don’t fancy bolting a bunch of Uranium to my hull, I guess we’ll just have to keep replacing our Zincs as they disappear into the salty blue.
It also means that our hull can be bested by a copper penny and a cup of salt water. We have a screwtop jar aboard for copper coins. The girls have helpfully drawn a skull and crossbones on it. Erik lives in fear of the day someone drops a penny down the bilge; it could eat a hole through the boat in no time flat.
But aside from small matters like sinking the boat for pocket change, corrosion is a daily annoyance aboard. Electronic devices stop working. The contact for the “E” key on my keyboard corroded away. Metal zippers turn green and seize up unless they are used on a weekly basis. We use some sort of a magic potion called 656 to get things moving again, but some zippers stay stuck and have to be cut off.
One day I was rearranging some food items in a locker when I moved a tin of dry mustard, and noticed a small pile of powder left behind on the shelf. I frowned at the tin. It looked fine from the front.
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| And how did the marketing department arrive at 113 grams, I wonder? |
And then I looked at the bottom.
Aha. The rust mice had been hard at work again.
We will keep fighting the good fight: keeping metal clean, rinsing with fresh water. But as I watch the USB ports on my computer slowly turn brown, I know this is a fight we can’t win for long. Those electrons are going to move.
But I might replace my can opener anyway.
