by Tim Boykett

I was digging through old notes, a 25-centimetre high pile of them, to celebrate the last day of Discardia by, well, discarding. That's the idea of it. Get rid of the stuff in your life that is dragging you down by its mere existence. On a page of old note paper I found the following (translations added where needed):

Reduce Reuse Recycle Für die Ewigkeit bauen (to build for eternity)

versus

Alles nachher kompostieren (compost everything afterwards) If (good) things cost enough, then they will be made and cause e.g. the rainforests to be sensibly used. Bootsbau (Boat building) as an example of Green Nomadism Joyon record trip → zero fossil fuels Gemütlichkeit (Comfort): no maintenance, wegwerfen (throw away). Mehr in schönheit und Pflege investieren, dann wird's länger benutzt. (Invest more in beauty and care, then it will be used longer) Benefits of Green Tech, making things possible - long trips – sail beating - extreme environment – mountain hut - isolation from “the net” - Tech nomadism - weight falls away - less complexity Green Ocean Race – Eric Forsyth

These notes obviously left some ideas fermenting in my head. Let's see if I can pull some of them into a shape that is vaguely comprehensible to others. A plastic boat survives a long time because it is resistant to decay. A wooden boat survives a long time because it inspires care. I will attempt to explain this in a moment. Probably some comparison to aged people here: those who get old because they have scavenged, saved, extorted and otherwise accumulated enough money to pay for someone to look after them, and those who get old because they have engendered love and compassion in those around them who want them to keep being around.

Francis Joyon is still the fastest solo world circumnavigator. His sailboat managed to be lighter and thus faster because, to a large degree, Joyon avoided using heavy generators and relied on renewable energy sources. By being greener, the boat was lighter, so it was faster. This was a story about green being luminous rather than green being a scratchy pullover and not enough heating. Too often “green” is interpreted and lived as a form of self-denial. Turning the heating down, wearing a scarf at the dinner table. Perhaps another solution is to re-design the heating as a pizza oven and invite friends over more in the winter to share food, wine and pleasure in a room warm and rosy with the open fire. For solo circumnavigation sailors, the practicalities of such efforts to be “green” are not purely about the vessel and the sailor, but also about sponsorship and media presence, safety and extreme speed. Whereas Moitessier was out of radio contact for months – his only communication home being through messages and film fired onto the decks of passing cargo ships with a slingshot – current solo circumnavigators appear online, give interviews and publicize their efforts continuously. This is a good thing when we recall the disappearance of Donald Crowhurst and the ensuing madness. These more recent circumnavigators therefore require significant electricity resources. Previously these resources were provided by generators and battery packs – a massive weight and complication. With green technologies, the needed electricity can be produced more with wind and solar energy, removing significant weight from the vessel.

Sailing could be the travel and transport of the future. Low emissions based upon the use of natural forces gives us a stupidly low ecological footprint for miles travelled – essentially zero. The permanent travellers Claudia and Juergen Kirchberger were on the road in the US when they noticed sailboats travelling past their campsites on the beaches and coastal headlands. They looked at the expense they had getting from one site to the next and noticed that these seagoing vessels were not paying anything except maintenance costs on their sails to go the same distances. And they were probably doing the repairs themselves. They ended up trading in their van for a sailboat in San Diego and spent three years on the Mexican coast and the Caribbean before abandoning it in a storm.

This might be the end of the story – just another forgotten wreck – and they thought that too until an email arrived from a friend in Austria. Their friend had been contacted by some fishermen who had salvaged the vessel, then floating around the Atlantic coast, and towed it back to harbour. There can be a lot of resilience built into a small vessel, even against the most extreme circumstances. Perhaps Shumacher's call to think small applies to living and travelling too.

(image: Subak2_moored)