Sustainable Sailing

We very much enjoy watching Sierra and Billy’s youtube channel “Tula’s Endless Summer” this particular video of them preparing to sail from St Croix to Grenada emphasised the difference we hope the investment in Sustainable Sailing will make.

In particular there are three Sustainable goals that we think have the potential to save a lot of time and money (as well as be a lower environmental impact).

The savings will come because water, fuel and laundry required an expensive stay in a marina as well as the money spent on each item (spending money to get water that doesn’t taste good is particularly galling).

So before living aboard we will definitely have a watermaker. They seem to be an area where there are lots of new developments at the moment, so we will leave it for a while (although while based in the Menai Strait there are no close places where you can fill up with water directly from a tap and hose so a watermaker will soon be attractive.

I’ve mentioned before that we will definitely make space to be able to do laundry aboard, probably the combination of a hand powered washing machine and an electric spin dryer. eg a “Wonder Wash“. Keeping on top of washing by doing small amounts frequently and without the hassle of finding, paying for and waiting at laundromats is our preferred option (but is only going to be possible with a watermaker as otherwise water will be too restricted).

While our long term goal is to replace the diesel engine with an electric motor (which would mean no need to pay for marina’s/docks or fuel) we will minimise our need to refuel by preferring to sail whenever possible (hence the work in progress to improve the sailing performance of Vida, especially, we suspect, in light conditions).

From what we have been reading the crossover point has come where watermakers are financially the better option, however, when these 3 things (watermaker, laundry and electric motor) are combined the impact should be significant in all of our sustainability goals.