Green Living

I'm wondering what the recent visitors of the repairman stripe were thinking as they bopped around my basement fixing stuff and saw the green cabinets and stacks of military green ammunition cans on wire racks? Especially given that several of those cans had a stack of very menacing looking knives of various stripes and styles. To those in the know, we call those "bayonets". Unfortunately, there was no room in the 80mm mortar round case for those since I was trying to hide the stacks of FAL and G3 magazines from those who might be exceptionally curious about the contents of said green cabinets.

I think the Sears guy was fine but the Comcast guy was more worried about the red and white, very ferocious cattle dog we had to sequester in the next room than he might have been about the close proximity of numerous implements of personal warfare, mayhem and destruction. Foster does not like be locked in a room all by himself, especially when there are new friends to be made.

I cannot understand why Achmed fears dogs. As long as the tail is wagging, you'll leave with the same number of holes in your body that you started with. Foster loves to make friends. He'll give up the tummy and give kisses freely so I just can't figure that fear out. Any takers?

Achmed should consider himself fortunate. The last Comcast guy Foster met resulted in a rapid visit to the vet the following week for some overdue canine alteration. I can't say he was fixed because, honestly, he wasn't broken. That much he made apparent to the Comcast guy's misfortune. Pushing 8 years later, we're still convinced that the vet missed one somewhere. The romance never really left Foster's life. And I have the pictures to prove it.

On to other topics...

You don't know how hard I found it on Saturday to not untie the boat and head out for an hour to two to enjoy what were perfect sailing conditions. Steady 10 knots out of the north on the Potomac. Just ripples for waves. Those are conditions that define the term "day sailing". Alas, I promised my wife that after I finished tracing the electrical system and making sure all was working prior to the 4th this week that I would not take her out and singlehand. She quoted the Boater Safety Course on me to back it up! I'm impressed. I kept my word and left her tied up.

But it was very tempting. An O'Day 22 is an easy boat to singlehand provided you can lash the tiller in place while you're forward handling the sails. You need to keep her up into the wind while raising them and that usually requires two people or a means to keep the bow into the wind. Nothing a length of line and two cleats can't handle. As I said, very tempting.

But I'm set for the 3rd and the 4th now. Masthead light is not functioning but since I am under 23 feet in length, I am not required to have one. A handheld light shone on the sails or forward under power is fine. I plan to fix that at haulout.

Which leads to today's minor rant...

For those of you all high and mighty on "green living", shut the fuck up. Buying compact fluorescents that require EPA instructions and a hazmat suit to clean up when broken, driving a Prius that polluted enough water to kill a coral reef in making its frame and batteries and sticking your cardboard into a plastic bin that uses more oil to produce than you will ever save driving said previous electric tinkertoy does not make you a guilt-free, environmentally aware, eco-sustainable, planet-saving citizen.

It makes you a hippie. And a particularly stupid one at that.

My plan is to live the green lifestyle you spout so proudly of from your pedestal. But you have no idea how difficult a problem that really is because it requires thought.

My sailboat, even a lowly 22 foot daysailer is more green that your supposed green lifestyle will ever be. And here's why:

• My sailboat is recycled. It is 32 years old and still going strong. How long will your Prius last?
• My sailboat is powered by the wind to get anywhere it needs to go. The gas engine is optional. How far will your Prius get on a single charge if we took its gas engine out?
• I can travel anywhere in the world on my sailboat without using a drop of oil. That's 24,000 nautical miles and seven continents. What's the range of a Prius on a single charge? 50-100 miles and maybe the next county?
• My electricity production is done by solar power. My boat is entirely a closed-loop. A single house battery provides me with all the light I need and the solar panel keeps it charged. So I'm two up on the sustainable living thing. How much oil does your Prius need to charge its battery?
• Marine regulations prohibit the discharge of polluted water into any inland waterways. So I'm not dumping toxins into the river. How much CO2 comes out of the tailpipe of your Prius?
• White sailboats don't contribute to solar global warming since they reflect heat away from their hulls. Just doing my part for the environment.

Seriously though, before I met my wife I was in the process of planning out my lifestyle. That involved me living aboard a 32-38 foot sailboat in Annapolis. While that seems insane, the cost advantages were (and are) very compelling. Done right, I could have retired in my 40s with enough money in the bank to let me sail anywhere in the world and live a life of reasonably luxury anywhere I landed for the rest of my life.

While my list of point above might seem like hyperbole, they really aren't. In looking to live in what is essentially a floating prison, you learn to prioritize and one of the things high on the list is power. Since boats at sea can only carry a limited amount of fuel and have limited room, you have to figure out your power usage accurately and plan accordingly. In doing so, you begin to weight the pros and cons of various approaches but when it comes right down to it, a sailing liveaboard is about as green as you can get.

When most people talk about "living off the grid", crusing liveaboards have no choice but to do so. Wind generators and solar panels are regular features on these boats and done right, can provide all of ones power needs. These are not new ideas. Crusing boats have been doing this stuff for over 20 years.

You can power everything from a generator hooked up to your engine (called an "auxillary" in the sailing world), you have to deal with your available fuel capacity, how long you'll be at sea and the possibility of these two very expensive pieces of mechanical equipment breaking and leaving you in the dark. Hence why most boats and smart owners use two or more systems for keeping the lights on.

And nothing will teach you more about the reality of so-called "green living" than planning the power budget for a sailboat as a liveaboard. If you think the solution to all the world's ills are wind generators and solar panels, you haven't studied the problem. Crusing sailboat owners have done so and know the subject backwards and forwards.

I find it funny in Googling "off the grid" solutions for power generation for houses that except for the house in the picture, I'm looking at the same techniques and equipment sailboats use. If you think generating all your home power from solar and batteries alone is sufficient and easy, I guarantee the price tag will knock you flat.

It costs thousands in a sailboat to use solar as a primary power source and you definitely won't be running a refrigerator, hot water tank or air conditioning unit with such a setup. If you can't do that in a oddly shaped 35x14 foot space with every top surface covered in high efficiency panels, you sure as hell aren't going to do it in your suburban McMansion without an acre or two nearby. And an expenditure equal to a significant fraction of the value of the house without you making significant lifestyle changes.

Solar is used to keep batteries topped off. Batteries are the primary source of power. When you need extra, you need a diesel powered generator (up to a few kilowatts) or a wind turbine.

It is amusing to see people touting wind as the next big thing in energy. Apparently these folks have never opened a West Marine catalog or picked up a copy of Cruising World. Wind turbines on a boat can produce a nice chunk of power. As long as the wind is blowing, you have lights. The downside of wind turbines and what they don't talk about for home use is noise and limits to usefulness.

A 36 inch sailboat wind generator at speed will sound like you're living next door to a neighbor with a Cessna in his garage. Yes, the blades make noise and as wind speed increases, so does the noise. Newer turbines have addressed this in various ways and look very appealing. Not cheap though.

There are two types of wind generators for power generation and each have their pluses and minuses. I personally prefer constant output generators since they don't require as much circuitry to handle them and tend to be more maintenance-free. But they don't produce as much power as the variable rate turbines. And both types of turbines do need someone to keep an eye on them since if the wind speed gets too high and the turbine doesn't have self-feathering or lockdown ability, they can literally spin themselves to death.

It's not fun dodging shrapnel as a two thousand dollar wind turbine explodes next to your head.

Still, one or two turbines can keep your batteries topped off and your lights on without running your diesel generator with all that icky oil. Just as long as the wind is blowing fast enough. 10+ knots usually.

After power, sailboat living just generally requires downsizing. While the period after my ex-wife and I separated wasn't fun, it was that period that taught me that I could indeed liveaboard and got me pursuing it. You see, after she left, she took the bed with her. So I had no reason to go into the bedroom and since we only had one bed, I slept on the futon in the living room. The kitchen was at my back and a small kitchen table was nearby. Despite the fact I was in a 1400 square foot apartment, I actually only lived for the better part of a year in a 12x14 foot room and used the rest of the space for storage.

That changed when I started dating my wife-to-be but for a very long time, I lived in a space typically found about a small sailboat. And enjoyed it.

It was refreshing to just pare away the non-essentials. How much counter space does one need to cook small meals once a day? How much space do you really need for a place to sleep? How much room do you actually have to set aside for your favorite books and a computer. "Not much" turned out to be the answer for me.

So I found myself contemplating and actually planning a "green lifestyle" long before the term was fashionable. Not that I considered it such since the "boat bum" lifestyle had some appeals all their own. Not everyone walking around downtown Annapolis could claim to have a view of the Bay and the Naval Academy from their home. $8000 per year for the liveaboard slip may seem outrageous but it was a lot cheaper than rent. My boat payment, insurance and slip fee would have been significantly less than my apartment rent at the time. And I would have had no utility bills since shore power was included in the slip fee and I would have had my own onboard power options.

With the advantage that if I tired of my Annapolis view, I could have St. Michaels a couple hours later and Baltimore the following night and back to Annapolis in time for work Monday if I so chose. I think a lot of people can see the appeal in that.

It never got out of the planning and phone call stages (just starting to call boat brokers) when I started dating my wife. But this desire has never let go and so far, she's been receptive to the idea of our weekend home in the future being a 30-40 foot sailboat on the Chesapeake Bay.

Our 22 foot sailboat on the Potomac is merely the first step in that direction. But on its own scale, it is just as much a green lifestyle as that future sailboat will be. The nice thing about sailboats is that there are lot of 20, 30 or even 40 year old boats out there that will work just fine depending on your desires and pocketbook.

The boat I was looking to liveabord ran between $15,000 and $28,000 depending on condition and equipment. A Gulfstar 37 center cockpit. Saw one recently on Craigslist in Annapolis for under $20,000. No one can argue that would be a cheap home after five years. Hell, a lot of new cars nowadays aren't that expensive. $25,000 for a house that you'll own free and clear in 5-10 years depending on how you structure the loan and $8-10K per year in rent and maintenance? Not a bad deal in my book.

Admittedly, there are downsides to this but your outlook and expectations matter a great deal in what you get out of it. I've been very pleased with my experiences aboard my new "old" 22 footer so far. I had my netbook playing movies on the cabin counter while I checked out the onboard wiring. Forward hatch open, 85 degrees outside and it was comfortable down below. Motion of the boat within the slip didn't bother me at all.

You scale that up to a small apartment and you'll have a hard time prying me off on weekends. The next step after that is to cast off the lines and not look back until I've reached St. Thomas.

Bet a Prius can't do that. So knock the "I'm green and doing my part!" (not to mention channeling Robert Heinlein) stuff off until you've actually tried it. Until your house is fenstooned in solar panels with a few wind turbines in the backyard, you've pried the engine out of your Prius and using it as a decorative yard display and an axe is lying next to the power pole you've just chopped down, can it. You're no more green than a Saudi Sheik with a fleet of oil tankers and an oil refinery dumping CO2 into the atmosphere faster than cows can fart.

I don't believe in all this eco-conservation bullshit and neither do you. Unlike you, I'm willing to admit it and actually give it a try someday.

What's your excuse?