From the title “Sustainable Sailing” and the posts so far we might have given then impression that it is all about the boat.
But that would be incorrect. We are looking to create a retirement future that is as fully sustainable (environmentally, financially and healthily) as possible. For us that means we have chosen to build that future around living on a boat. Others might not be attracted to the freedoms, joys and hassles of a sailing home. However, life can still be sustainable, and a lot of the things we are trying to do with a boat apply to other options for retirement (or earlier) living.
Renewable energy
Zero fossil fuels
Reuse, repair, recycle
Fewer plastics
Without a boat some will be easier but some harder. The scale and expectations probably make it more challenging. The space and lack of destructive power of salt water can make it easier.
Whatever your choice, boat or not boar, we have all got to make really significant (as in orders of magnitude changes) to become more sustainable in the way we live and we are going to have to do it very quickly.
A slightly shorter and very wet Friday working on Vida yesterday. Still some good progress.
Aft cabin
We tested the foam mattress on our bed. Minor adjustments and the covers can be done (it was very comfortable). Also cut down the edges that hold the cushions on so that we can make a double bed infill that doesn’t have bits of wood sticking through you.
There is a slight slope as one side of the bed is 9mm higher than the other. The infill will mask this a bit.
Aft head
Continued to strip out the old stuff to create more space. Discovered another bolt missing and a loose bolt in the steering system hidden below the basin (the wood frame on the left of the picture).
We need to think about what to build the new “furniture” with and what to cover the walls with in this heads. Thick ply covered with formica has lasted well but when the screw heads are covered with the formica and wood trim is nailed on it makes access difficult (eg to check that steering bolts are ok).
We certainly don’t want to buy hardwood for trim due to the deforestation issues.
Thin plastic sheeting held on by velcro provides an easy to clean and easy to remove for inspection covering for the headlining and walls. But is plastic. Currently wondering if bamboo panels or veneers might be an option.
Wheelhouse
We removed the headlining and the rooftop grab rails to prepare to fit the solar panels. The grab rails will be replaced when we have refurbished them. Found hundreds of flies hiding behind the liner. Going to be in the far future before we replace this lining as many more important jobs.
Leaks
The very heavy rain allowed us to find new leaks. Lots of the windows are leaking but for the most part the water goes behind the headlining. We are going to have to remove quite a lot of that and might leave it bare for next year as it is a big and tricky job. We do have replacement windows on order so fitting them will be our highest priority (going to need well over 200 new bolts through the cabin sides).
The 2 “transparent” deck hatches both leak. We have on the list to replace the very crazed acrylic for aesthetic reasons but will need to make it a higher priority now we know they leak. Hoping to refurbish the frames.
Also the forehatch (ventilation/emergency exit in the guest cabin at the front of the boat) leaks. Hoping we can fit a seal to stop this.
Onwards
Although the scale of the leaks was more than expected (it was very heavy rain and strong winds) it hasn’t changed our plans much. We already have the windows on order and the hatches will give a lot more light when sorted.
The progress on our cabin is nice. Soon going to be a very comfortable retreat from the rest of work space during the refurbishment. Getting rid of the old toilet and plumbing has already made a significant difference to the smell (not that it was particularly bad but the difference between the two head compartments is now very noticeable).
Found a gap in the rain to take the cushions off so Jane can finish them at home. But the boatyard is a bit flooded.
More heavy rain forecast for the rest of the day. Only here til 4pm today as we have a social event this evening 😊
Wind is still strong, was good that earlier today staff from the boatyard came round all the boats to make sure all the props supporting the boats were secure.
Jane is busy making the cushions for the aft cabin (our bedroom). She “invested” in the cheapest electric carving knife available to cut the foam. It works but after every 10 minutes of cutting it needs a half hour rest to cool down.
So we won’t be having any guests around for dinner any time soon 😊
In my previous “The Electric Plan” I haven’t mentioned “Shore Power” (ie plugging your boat into a mains power supply when in a marina).
The reason is simple. We don’t plan to have a shore power connection. There are several, fairly obvious reasons.
Less is more. The less we have installed the less it costs, the less there is to go wrong and the less weight on the boat (hence, we sail faster)
There are a few dangers with shore power. Without a fully isolating/blocking transformer it can cause corrosion due to the interaction between the shore power, boat power and salt water. Faults can cause current to go into the water and it takes a surprisingly small current to kill someone who falls in (apparently a number of deaths of people falling into marina water may be due to electric shock rather than heart attack as previously thought).
If you use shore power it is highly unlikely that the Marina electricity supply will be from renewable sources (at least for quite a few years). That takes away from the ability to live sustainably with zero fossil fuel use.
We don’t want to spend much time in marina’s anyway. So our time and money will be much better spent on improving the renewable generation as that will useful all the time, not just in marinas.
Our plans for solar will allow us easily have all the panels in use when in a marina (either over the top of the mizzen boom or by removing it and laying them on the aft cabin top).
Having said all that, when we are in the boatyard at the moment, we are using their mains power, at least in part because we have neither batteries nor solar installed. Given we will be sleeping aboard whenever we visit throughout a North Wales winter we might need more power than we can generate in order to stay warm. What we have is a camping site cable with circuit breaker and 4 sockets at the end of it, designed to provide mains power into tents.
Just a quick thought about the wider picture from my earlier post about aiming towards using zero fossil fuels on Vida.
This has to be part of a bigger picture and one of the beautiful things that a sailing boat does is bring that bigger picture to a more human, a more manageable scale. So focusing on zero fossil fuels in the boat needs to be reflected in every other issue of sustainability. Not that we are anywhere near perfect or even good enough but we are trying to move forward.
So we believe that cutting fossil fuel use should not be isolated from other decisions and needs to be supported by for example:
Keeping to a zero flying commitment. Sustainable sailing to other parts of the world and then flying back and forth is deceiving ourselves about the impact of our lives. This needs to be faced right up front and might mean that living aboard does not imply long distance voyaging if you have work or family commitments. It is part of the cost and we are trying to be honest about what it means for us and the important people in our lives. They all know that we have chosen not to fly for the last 14 years and that it isn’t something that we are going to change. At the same time we are honest enough to admit that there are a small number of situations that we would consider an emergency (what counts as an emergency will obviously be a very personal and individual thing) and where we would bike the bullet and fly back.
Lowest impact materials possible used on the boat. For example bio-epoxy resin.
What other areas do you think should be priorities for trying to build consistency and hold everything together?
The goal for the environmental element of Sustainable Sailing has to be a zero use of any fossil fuel, at least for energy when using the boat. I don’t think we will be there in terms of all inputs for a long time yet (zero fossil fuel food supply or clothing or replacement parts as examples).
Starting point
When we bought Vida there were 4 fossil fuels aboard her.
Diesel: For the main engine providing propulsion when not sailing
Paraffin: For the hot air heating system (used batteries as well for fans)
Propane Gas: For cooking
Petrol: For dinghy outboard engine (some petrol was included, an engine wasn’t – but is the default for most cruisers)
Where we are at
So far we have removed 3 of these (Paraffin, Propane and Petrol). Two of these we have replaced with electricity (cooking and outboard engine) and we are confident that we will have enough solar power generation for these to be powered fully by renewable energy.
But here on the challenges get bigger. We haven’t replaced the boat heating system yet and we can only have hot water if we burn diesel in the main engine (which heats hot water as a side effect). We will be removing the current hot water system anyway as it is 42 years old, totally inaccessible and the immersion heater doesn’t work. It is less dangerous than the risk we had of paraffin leaking all over the engine compartment but it is a metal tank full of water right by the alternator that I can’t inspect. So it will come out.
So we need electric only heating and hot water. This is a significant challenge and I’m struggling to find examples of people who have done this at all and certainly not without running fossil fuel battery charging.
The main engine
So far I haven’t mentioned replacing the diesel engine with an electric motor. To reach zero that will be essential, but for the moment our plan is to simply minimise it’s use by a) improving sailing performance & our skills so that we use the engine less b) not relying on the engine for hot water heating or electricity generation. An electric motor will have it’s own battery bank. It will also have the potential to generate some electricity when you are sailing (water turns the propeller and the motor turns into a generator). So it can be possible (in some circumstances) to consider this a as a separate, self contained system (if like us you intend to keep motoring to an absolute minimum)
Challenges and calculations
However, there are more challenges. There are other significant electric uses and we need to limit the daily average electric consumption to the daily average renewable generation. At the moment we don’t know what the real levels of power generation will be (see the post on Solar generation for our current plans).
For the rest the calculations all get tricky because generation and consumption both vary according to the current climate/weather and activity (sailing or anchored). Unfortunately, in colder places in bad weather energy consumption will rise (as you want to stay warm and are less tolerant of cold water for washing) and solar generation will drop (less sun).
There are also significant differences between when you are sailing and when you are anchored (or in a marina or whatever).
Cooking: much less energy when sailing as tend to restrict hot meals and do simple one pot cooking.
Hot water: much less energy when sailing as showering will be tricky and so reduced, also little washing up
Lighting: Much more when sailing due to navigation lights and someone up all night long
Navigation: All instruments on when sailing. Particularly heavy users include Radar and AIS.
Autopilot: If using electronic (all we have at present) then a pretty high use when sailing
Other things will probably vary less when sailing or at anchor eg refrigeration and heating.
Contrary to what we expected it seems that the biggest challenges are not the high draw items (induction hobs, watermaker, windlass) that are run for small amounts of time but the things that need to run for long hours at a fairly constant draw (refrigeration, autopilot, navigation, heating). That is especially true if you can use high power systems when you are generating renewable energy with a fully charged battery bank.
Gaining freedom
One of the key advantages of heading for zero fossil fuels is the longer periods of independence possible as you don’t need to refuel. However, the three other key factors frequently limiting independence are:
Food: Not much we can do differently, however, if you choose you can stock up for longer periods if you are willing to sacrifice fresh food after a while.
Water: This is where a game changer is available. A watermaker (turns sea water into drinking water) can significantly increase independence and in many cases save money (as well as being higher quality and safer in many places). However, it uses a lot of energy.
Laundry: The two most common options seem to be a) laundromats (time consuming, quite expensive, reduces independence) combined with occasional hand washing when you run out or b) a standard home washing machine on larger boats.
The plans
I’m now going to review all the main electricity uses and what we are planning (or just thinking about). Of course at the moment many of these are provisional and will depend on what we find in the real world is possible in solar generation (and whether we go for other means of generation).
Cooking
We are starting with 2 separate 1 hob induction cookers. We will have a gimballed tray so that one of these can be used safely when rolling around at sea. We are going for two separate hobs as this provides redundancy. It also means the gimballed tray is smaller. This way each hob is capable of 2,000 watts, when you have a double hob the total is less than 4,000 watts, either one hob is less powerful or both can’t be run on full power. We will look at other items in the more distant future if there is power to spare (oven, breadmaker etc).
Refrigeration
Fridges and freezers can easily become the biggest users of energy when in the tropics. We don’t have anything at present so will be fitting a keel plate based fridge condenser (most efficient) and in our refitted galley will be creating a new highly insulated fridge space. We will not fit a freezer.
Heating
The three most common types of boat heating system are:
blown hot air
fuel burning “stove” typically diesel or wood
hot water radiators
I’ve found no examples of any of these using renewable energy.
The most promising option that we are going to try (it will at least work while we are in a boatyard with mains power) is an electric radiant heat wall panel. These are 240 volt and can work with electric socket thermostats/timers. They claim to be highly efficient. There are far too many unknowns at present to know how viable this option will prove to be, all we can say is it is the most promising option with the fewest energy losses that we have found so far.
Hot Water
The two options I have found so far are:
A “standard” marine calorifier (hot water tank with immersion heater and often additional heating from the engine cooling water), with the immersion heater potentially changed from 240volt to 12 volt or powered from the inverter. These need an expansion tank.
Getting hard information to compare these is difficult.
Watermaker
Before we start living aboard we will be installing a watermaker to increase our freedom from expensive marinas or lots of time and labour carrying water bottles to and from the boat. As water becomes more expensive and scarce this saves money and reduces demand on a limited resource in poorer communities. We will need to build a system ourselves from parts (cuts the cost to about 25% of a ready packaged system), the downside of this is a higher power consumption. Likely to be restricted to times when we are at anchor with the sun out
Laundry
Our preference is to combine a hand powered washing machine with an electric spin dryer as allowing us to avoid the need for laundromats while keeping energy use way below a washing machine. The key benefits are:
Time: finding and using laundromats/laundry’s is costly in time, money and location
Space: a standard electric washing machine is much larger, not portable and will require permanent plumbing.
More suited to boat needs. The hand powered washing machines are robust and give good results. A spindryer will get clothes much dryer than the washing machines typically installed on boats.
Lighting
Vida has very poor internal lighting (eg just 2 12v lamps in the main cabin), none of the lighting is LED. So we will be able to get much brighter lights that are more reliable and use far less power.
Navigation
Currently the masthead light doesn’t work. None of the lights are LED so we can save power and gain reliability.
In terms of instruments the systems are very old. We are not going to rush to replace them but they are not complete and are not connected together. The total draw is likely to grow a bit over time. Plenty more research to be done.
Autopilot
Vida still has an original working Necco autopilot. They are supposed to be effective although we don’t know how much power it will use compared to a more modern one. We need to add an external on/off switch as the original broke and has been bypassed (it isn’t safe to have to go below to turn the autopilot on or off in an emergency). The controls are very limited compared to a modern autopilot. You have to set the compass dial to the course you want. The two key features we will miss compared to modern ones are follow current course and tack.
The good news is that it is installed in a really good way. The drive unit is completely protected from the weather and has an excellent connection via a chain to the steering rods.
For the short term we hope that this will be enough. If it fails then I would expect we would replace it with another electric autopilot. I can’t imagine us not wanting to have one. However, in the long term if we are finding ourselves making long ocean passages then we will be looking hard at installing a mechanical windvane self steering system as they work well without using any electrical power at all. We would probably fit a Hydrovane as it doesn’t need any connection to the existing steering system (which would be tricky due to the layout and space constraints). A hyrdovane also gives the option of attaching a very small/cheap electric autopilot to it as a backup, it is also the only common system that also acts as an emergency rudder if your main rudder fails (one of the most common worst case scenarios when crossing oceans).
Windlass
We are upgrading to an electric windlass to raise the anchor (more in future posts). The current draw when in use is large, however, it is not used for very long and so we are not concerned about the impact on our power capacity.
Other
As we look at what other people are using we are clearly aiming at the lower consumption end of the spectrum. No big audio visual systems, no scuba tanks, no massive computer power for continuous high quality video editing, no air conditioning, no bow thruster.
Summary
Our goal remains to get to zero fossil fuel dependency. So we will change the consumption side to match what we can achieve from maximising the renewable generation side. That will not just affect the renewable generation we fit but also where we cruise. For example if we can’t generate enough renewable energy to stay warm and comfortable in a cold climate then we will move to a more temperate one. If we need to stay at anchor for a few extra days to fully recharge batteries then we will do so.
So we are going to be doing some repairs on the hull to fill in holes where we remove Seacocks (the number we remove is still up for debate). Boats like ours were built with Polyester Resins and glassfibre. However, we plan to generally use Epoxy resins for repairs (stronger, less shrinkage). But Epoxy resins have also been both not very safe to use (toxic) and very fossil fuel intensive. Also more expensive. See this guide to making the repairs.
Fortunately there are now Bio-Resins available which are far less made for the environment. The one I’m looking at using is Super Sap. It is quite time consuming to find (and confusing options) and to do so at good prices.
The other area I’m researching at the moment is whether there is a more environmentally better option than woven Glassfibre mat. There do seem to be both Flax and Hemp options (although many times more expensive).
This isn’t really about sustainability but this pair of videos by Ryan and Sophie were good fun to watch. I’m not putting catching Octopuses high on our priority list 🙂
Sustainable Sailing 