Anyone know where the Faroe Islands are? They're in the North Atlantic, somewhere between Iceland & Scotland. 50,000 people, 80,000 sheep. If you ask for directions to get there, you'll probably hear "you can't get there from here"...
Anyway, about 8 years ago, a recently-delivered fishing vessel developed an electrical problem. Looked like a Hall-effect sensor on leads to one of the navigation lights (to sense whether the filaments were intact) wasn't working, triggering the stand-by light to come on, even though the main bulb was OK. If I remember correctly, we had a TWIDO PLC in the lighting control panel, but GSM modems were still in their infancy back then, so we had no remote troubleshooting ability. Sounds trivial, right? After about a week on the phone with a "technician" (Bubba) who spoke Icelandic, Faroese, Danish & German, but very little English, I was able to deduce that it wasn't the sensor, and that the MCR wasn't energizing when the PLC was on, likely indicating a burnt fuse or a burnt coil in the MCR. After several days of trying to explain to the technician where the relay was (a simple 8-pin) and where the six spare relays were, I decided to jump on a plane.
Well, you really can't get there from here - at least not easily. The first leg of the flight to London was delayed by 4 hours. Missed my flight to Copenhagen by 30 minutes. Spent the night in airport hotel. Not cheap. Begged another airline to accept my ticket from the previous day and jumped on a little plane to Vagar. Arrived OK, rented a car, drove through miles of tunnels and along the side of countless cliffs, found the boat, changed the relay and returned to Vagar the same day. outgoing flight delayed due to fog. Finally left 8 hours later. 15 minutes from Copenhagen, a kidney stone decided it was time to come out. Nearly died before I landed. Spent the night in hospital (thankful for travel insurance). Managed to get on the flight to London later the next day, then off to Canada.
The St. John's airport we were supposed clear customs was closed due to fog. Flew to Halifax, instead, where we waited on the runway for several hours because there were no customs agents available. Finally flew back to St. John's, cleared customs, flew back to Halifax and made it home the next day.
All for a 20-second relay change!