The start of a new cruising season is a time often filled with thoughts about the exciting new adventures ahead. As it should be. But it’s also a time to ponder how we, as individual sailors, can help make sailing a greener, more sustainable activity. While what follows is a far cry from mastering carbon sequestration or cold fusion, here are some simple ways we can all reduce our ­environmental wakes.

Chandlery choices. It’s incredibly hard to eliminate all single-­use plastics, but numerous manufacturers are working to reduce our dependence on these materials. Companies including B&G, Harken and Yamaha have pledged to reduce their dependence on unsustainable packaging, and green-minded customers are encouraged to support businesses that share these ethics. 

DC alternatives. Few sailors enjoy listening to marine engines rumble just to keep the batteries charged. Fortunately, today’s hydrogenerators and wind generators can keep the DC juices flowing, and solid options exist from manufacturers, including Eclectic Energy, Nature Power and Watt&Sea. (See the November/December 2021 issue of Cruising World.)

Grocery getting. Provisions are fundamental to any passage or cruise, but how one’s victuals come packaged can go a long way toward reducing the amount of garbage in our collective wake. If you’re buying shelf-sturdy items such as nuts, grains and dried fruits, check the bulk-food aisle. Some stores allow you to bring your own reusable containers (they’re weighed ahead of time) to eliminate single-use packaging.

Hydrate or die. Dock water doesn’t usually taste great, but bottled water generates plastics and microplastics. One smart option is to buy an RV-style, spigot-attached water filter (ballpark $30 from Amazon; not for use with saline) and a clean, dedicated hose. This inexpensive kit can be used to fill large onboard dromedaries, which, in turn, can fill or refill each crewmember’s reusable water bottle. 

ICE melters. It’s ironic that internal combustion engines are nicknamed “ICE machines,” given their CO2 footprints, but there’s optimism in today’s marine-specific electric motors. These range from DC-powered outboards to saildrive-style electric motors from companies including ePropulsion, Oceanvolt and Torqeedo. If your whip or dink needs repowering, go electric. You’ll enjoy quieter, vibration-free cruising and—given the automotive industry’s direction—likely increase your vessel’s resale value.

Toxin taming. When it comes to protecting coral reefs and the marine environment, not all sunscreens are created equal. Instead of falling for marketing lingo such as “reef safe,” read each product’s ingredient list and cross-reference it for known environmental toxins. Online resources exist at the Haereticus Environmental Laboratory and on Cruising World’s website, making it easier to protect your family from UV rays without harming the environs we all love. 

Second acts. Few commissioning activities are as exciting as bending on new sails, even if doing so begs questions about what to do with the old inventory. Companies such as Sea Bags Maine and Mafia Bags accept sail donations and repurpose old airfoils into duffels and totes. Other options include organizations such as Sails for Sustenance, which collects old sails and provides them to Haiti’s subsistence fishermen.

The post Sustainable Boating: Dive Into New Ways to Keep It Green appeared first on Cruising World.

This story originally appeared on Sailing Totem.

Immersing in the natural world was a meaningful part of our cruising dream. We anticipated the rewards of living with a lighter footprint, and helping our children internalize the wonder that is our planet.

Senegalese poet and naturalist, Baba Dioum:

“In the end, we will conserve only what we love. We will love only what we understand. We will understand only what we are taught.”

And so we hope to teach our children about the world we live on and the people who inhabit it, and to instill value and advocacy, while seeing breathtaking natural beauty. And yet what we saw over and over in hand with that beauty was the devastation of a planet abused, while whitewashed and kept at a distance from privileged lives.

While I remain grateful for our far-flung travels, looking back it smacks of the privilege we have to observe and process and consider from a safe distance. How will we use this opportunity? One way is to bear witness. And so, here, we bear witness to a few of the environmental tragedies we have seen around the world.

Borneo- Illegal Mines Poison Rivers

Winding up the Kumai river to see orangutans in the wild, in one of their last natural habitats, was anticipated to be a highlight of our six months in Indonesia. But the indelible impression this national park left on us was as much of environmental tragedy as it was the apes. That the protected parklands they were meant to live on had been appropriated for palm oil plantations, their vibrant green sometimes visible behind the fringe of tropical forest. On our way to the orangutan’s preserve, we navigated through runoff from an illegal gold mine and watched the milky water cut into the tannic river. Nearby indigenous Iban people fished to feed their families.

Sydney- Kids and Haul

In Australia, everyone knows the phrase “Clean Up Australia” after the event (and subsequent culture) initiated and promoted by Australian solo sailor, Ian Kiernan. Seeing plastic trash litter the shores of pristine islands, thousands of miles from anywhere, left an impression on Kiernan – and on our kids, who embarked on a mission to collect and dispose the garbage that floated around the marina where we lived in 2011, trapped in shocking volume by the dock floats.

Despite cultural orientation toward sustainability and waste management, the consumer driven population produces (as we do) an astonishing amount of trash. Every time it rained, the lip service paid vs action taken to environmental stewardship is painfully clear. Runoff and spillover carries bottles, Styrofoam, ear plugs by the hundred, entire computer cases, and of course plastic bottles until every berth in the marina is clogged, and the water beneath obscured by floating trash.

Chagos- Fluorescing Coral

The British archipelago of Chagos sits nearly smack in the middle of the expansive Indian Ocean. Meaningful populations don’t exist for wide stretches of ocean, and yet the coral here was stressed by the man-made impact of climate change. Underwater, these equatorial islands held striking corals in fluorescent colors. Beautiful? To some eyes, but those fluorescent colors presented instead of ‘normal’ coloration because the coral is bleaching in response to stress from unusually high water temperatures. If the conditions don’t improve, the coral dies. A marine biologist cruising through just ahead of us estimated 80 to 90% of the coral was bleached or bleaching during our 2015 stay. (To learn more about this fluorescing phenomenon, and coral bleaching, see the excellent documentary Chasing Coral – currently on Netflix.)

Comoros- Burning Garbage Mountain

Garbage disposal is a problem in much of the world that cruisers traverse. At our first anchorage in Comoros, the island nation between Tanzania and Madagascar, a literal mountain of garbage lined the beach. Cars backed up to dump loads; it appeared to substitute for a public facility, and burned 24×7. When winds shifted to blow it towards Totem, the stench of plastic burn made breathing difficult. When surviving from day to day is your priority, working out a healthier waste management system is harder to prioritize.

Indonesia- Daily Tidal Garbage

Most of the islands we visited in Indonesia don’t have waste management, but Ambon was an exception. Not only was there a recycling facility in development, but the entire community had public days for picking up garbage! We’d see lines of children in brightly colored school uniforms collecting garbage to be properly sorted and disposed. And then, the tide would run through a cycle, and once again the bay would fill with floating plastic. Despite the public effort, the public will lags and there remained no stigma against throwing wrappers on the ground where you stand.

Indian Ocean- The Thinking Chair

When it’s possible, we pick up garbage and carry it to be disposed. It’s rarely practical; the facilities simply don’t exist. But occasionally it adds a colorful slice to life for a while. While sailing through atolls in the Maldivian chain, we saw a larger object floating; it proved to be a plastic chair. This chair subsequently attended numerous beach potlucks, and was a suitable aft-deck “thinking chair” before being re-homed to an island where it was put in use.

Sri Lanka- Water Sampling

We see a lot, and it’s natural to want to do something about it. Participating in citizen science projects is a goal but the logistics can be complicated. But water samples we took along the way – here, filmed in Sri Lanka’s Trincomalee harbor—fed into a global study on microplastics. 48°N readers have the benefit of living in an area teeming with opportunities to learn and contribute!

Uninhabited Islands Everywhere – Garbage Nets

The cruisers dream an uninhabited tropical island to call your own for a while! That dream bubble pops when you land on the beach. Islands are nets, catching all that floats their way. The most trashed beaches we’ve been on are where nobody lives, because there is nobody to be offended by the sight and pick it up—or see the utility in the flotsam and take it for use. On this island, going ashore to collect firewood turned comically into going ashore to collect plastic shoes. This square of around 200 shoes represent about 20 minutes worth of collection in an area where plastic bottles outnumbered shoes.

Maldives- Sea Level Rise

The highest natural point of land in Maldives is less than 10 feet tall. Most of the nation sits at mere inches above sea level on sandy atolls. As sea levels rise, these islands are losing ground. Highly recommended by Totem’s crew, the excellent documentary “The Island President,” the story of Maldives’ former head of state and his effort to get attention for their plight at the Copenhagen climate convention.

Mexico – Everywhere Garbage

Garbage is poorly managed in many places for a range of reasons. The acrid smell of burning plastic wafting to Totem upon our arrival to Mexico in the fall of 2008 sadly offered a nostalgic throwback to the time I lived in Southeast Asia. In rural or poor areas, there and here, local waste management often uses one of the most toxic methods possible: the low-temperature burn. EPA studies now show that the relatively low temperatures of beach or backyard fires (as compared to commercial incinerators) for burning create staggeringly toxic emissions, and not just from plastics. And yet this is probably the most common method of waste disposal we have experienced as cruisers. Image above snapped when we rented a car to see grey whales on the Pacific coast earlier this month; we pulled into a turnout for what we thought was a scenic vista, but was actually an impromptu garbage dump.

Now What?

Friends of ours darkly refer to their cruising adventures as The Farewell Tour. I reject the perspective of “ah, too bad you couldn’t see it when…” (fill in the blank of someone’s story about visiting a place X years ago, or before Y happened; it’s so tiresome, we know)—but in this case there’s a different bit of urgency. So much is destroyed so we can have fashionable clothing or cheaper goods or industrial oil to fuel our consumer machines.

I don’t have any suggestions for what you should do. Maybe this ramble through the widespread problem—and how it lives unmasked in places outside our usual view—prompts introspection. Last Saturday at 8:30pm in your time zone was Earth Hour. Started in Sydney, Australia, in 2007 as a symbolic hour without lights on, it’s been a catalyst for awareness—and some driving legislative changes. This year’s virtual video is… intriguing! We took part from our corner of Mexico.

The post Sailing Totem: Bearing Witness to our Folly appeared first on Cruising World.

If you get a big enough chart, sailing from Maine to Bermuda looks easy. You’ll drop the mooring in Portland, motor east until you finish your coffee, get the sails up and point her south. Along the way, you’ll pass through at least three marine protected areas plus the Gulf Stream, and you imagine that these will inspire you with glorious sea mammals, birds and wonders of the deep.

That was my daydream, anyway, and the marine protected areas delivered, but wow, the sailing was hard on body, boat and spirit, with headwinds, steep seas and gusty nights. In short, we got our butts kicked going down there, but the splendors of wild nature compensated for the broken rigging. While there’s much to say about the mistakes I made as a sailor and the lessons I learned en route, there’s even more to say about encountering whales, dolphins and coral in ocean spaces favored with environmental protection.

I assembled an eager crew for this classic passage, though not one you’d confuse with professional racers or delivery skippers. We were neither polished nor salty. My work and my home are in Utah, but I go back to sea level and launch my old Beneteau First 42, Nellie, whenever I can. This Bermuda venture was her longest passage yet. Derek Holtved is a climbing friend from Banff, Canada, who once crewed on 12-Meters. He is the most competent sailor I know, with a dogged attention to detail and an aptitude for mechanical invention. Rieko is married to Derek. They met in Japan, and she’s much bigger than her 4-foot-10-inch frame. She has plenty of saltwater knowledge from the time she and Derek lived aboard their own boat. Last but rarely least is my father, Ted McCarthy — 75 years old for this voyage, with a lifetime of sailboat racing behind him and an abundant supply of anecdotes involving running aground, hitting other boats and dragging anchor, each of which makes Derek grumble, mutter and blush.

43.55° N and 70.10° W. Wind SW 11. Seas 2 to 3 feet.

We left Portland Harbor on the tide and set the big genoa to beat into a southwest breeze, and soon Derek and I were talking through our philosophies of sailing. He argued that sails are set to reach a waypoint; I held that sails are set to put us in the best relation to nature’s forces. Derek said, “So I use nature to go great places, and you go to the great places nature sends you.”

“Yes,” I said while adjusting the genoa car. “And we both feel better for it.”

If sailing invigorates us through close contact with the wilderness, then marine protected areas (MPAs) are the places sailors will feel most alive. At heart, MPAs are as straightforward as their name — they are marine environments legally dedicated to the preservation of natural and cultural resources. Basically, these areas promote biodiversity and systems resilience in the face of harsh forces like pollution, overfishing or ocean acidification.

But they’re not fenced zones excluding you; most MPAs allow some extraction, and nearly all invite visitors, balancing the interests of conservationists, fishermen and other economic stakeholders. Cruisers can see firsthand the ways MPAs refigure stressed marine environments into healthy parcels where depleted species can repopulate and ecosystems can rebound. There are tiny MPAs, such as Buck Island Reef National Monument’s 176 acres in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and huge ones, such as Papahanaumokuakea’s 500,000 square miles in the northwestern Hawaiian Islands.

42.15° N and 70.10° W. Wind SW 21. Seas 4 to 5 feet, with building chop.

You don’t have to go to the exotic edges of the planet to experience MPAs. We sailed right through the amazing Stellwagen Bank Marine Sanctuary, jibed past the new Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, and spent days within Bermuda’s protected coral reefs.

In Stellwagen Bank, I saw a right whale on our first day of sailing, and we were still close enough to shore that I had a Red Sox game on the radio. Rieko was at the helm, and from the top of a swell, said, “See that?” She pointed to port, and two waves later, a splash was clear against the sunset. I assumed it was a humpback, but when it came up two more times to blow, I could see the head coloring and black fins did not match my expectations. Right whales are endangered and long-hunted creatures now making a slight rebound in protected areas. Derek and Rieko wondered at this ocean display so close to New England’s biggest city. A look at the chart showed Stellwagen Bank like a catcher’s mitt between Cape Cod and Cape Ann, all set to receive whatever Boston pitched seaward. First, we saw these bobbing, spouting right whales, and later, a group of rowdy humpbacks, slapping their fins and breaching in a cloud of seabirds. The sanctuary’s rules are clearly marked on all charts — mandatory ship reporting in critical right whale habitat — and they seem to be working.

39.49° N and 69.50° W. Wind SW 19. Seas confused.

Three days out, with hundreds of miles to go, my dad and I chatted through the 0400-to-0800 watch. Despite the big wind, I found this watch easier than the midnight-to-0400 shift because the sun was coming up, and with the day came visibility, warmth and then breakfast. The sleek head and back of a dolphin bobbed and submerged, bobbed and submerged, and I hoped he would bring a friend to play on our bow wave. It was our proximity to the Gulf Stream that brought the wildlife this time — too rough for commercial fishing, too deep for drilling — protected by its own heat and momentum.

These encounters with living sea creatures mattered. Biologist E.O. Wilson coined the term biophilia for that unnamable connection humans feel toward animals — “the urge to affiliate with other forms of life,” as he put it. Out at sea, days from anything more solid than sargasso weed, I felt the warmest affection for this passing mammal, and I waved as you would acknowledge a stranger on a country road.

I love that sailing brings me closer to nature. There’s the rapt attention to sea state, clouds and breeze, and there are the hours in the cockpit where my eyes and ears conform to the rolling swell and open to the variation of a whale’s breath or a shearwater at work. In a sailboat, I become part of the sea’s broad rhythms and open myself to the nuances of a natural world that my terrestrial life tends to obscure behind Netflix and big-box stores. My dad quoted Wordsworth, who celebrated a heightened nature sensitivity: “So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, / have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; / have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; / or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.” Exactly right. These old sea gods recede when I am getting and spending, but they come back in a hurry as I reef a sail at night or pray for a fair current. Ahead, the Gulf Stream’s train of tall clouds puffed always west to east, west to east. Around us seabirds bobbed in the warm waves. Tacking along with two reefs and the small jib, we were focused on the natural systems that carried us along and rewarded us for our attention.

35.56° N and 68.17° W. Wind SE 14 and building. Seas 4 feet and confused.

Out on the other side of the Gulf Stream, our attention to nature wasn’t what it could have been. Derek and Rieko were paying full care to the size of our sails — one reef in the main and a partially furled jib moved us at a steady 5 knots through mischievous seas — but sliding past us was yet another Mylar balloon. This one read “Party!” The ocean was speckled with this garbage. Was there once an innocent, pollution-free time? A time when a vibrantly red sunset meant good weather would follow and not excess particulates clogging our atmosphere? We were 300 miles from Bermuda, floating on 12,000 feet of open water, but we still saw flaps of plastic and foam cups. Byron wrote, “Man marks the earth with ruin — his control stops at the shore.” I hate to burst these Romantic bubbles, but it seemed to me that our vast and limitless oceans are actually the primary casualties of climate change. Most notably, the Atlantic that rolled under me is both warming and acidifying thanks to high levels of carbon in the atmosphere.

MPAs are one way to advance the cause of sustainable seas — by taking the pressure off one fertile zone, the whole system rebounds. Just as any sailor knows it’s time to adjust course when they are sailing by the lee, we need to recognize that signs of an ocean in crisis are all around us: one-third of the Great Barrier Reef bleached in 2016; acidifying waters suppressing mussel populations on the coast of Maine; heat expansion bringing us sea-level rise; warmer water killing coral from Tortola to Kiribati. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the three hottest years on record were 2016, 2015 and 2014. If the ocean absorbs three-quarters of that global heat, it should be no surprise that there are bigger storms coming to further tax the ecosystems of every shore. Looking to windward, it’s clear that sailors are on the front lines of these changes. We can take an active role in witnessing ocean change and advocating ocean health.

Mother and baby Atlantic spotted dolphins (Stenella frontalis) swim together in the sandy shallow waters of the Bahamas.

32.7° N and 64.4° W. Wind S 9. Seas 2 feet.

When a forestay breaks at sea, there’s a special kind of sound. Just over 20 nautical miles out from Bermuda, I was at the nav station admiring our progress when a thumping pop made the boat shudder, and I felt something bad, something structural. Derek knew what it was immediately — “Forestay!” — and things were happening fast. On deck, the genoa and furling gear were pressing into the shrouds, tumbling in slow motion. Wrestling the spinnaker halyard through that tangle to affix it forward while crying, “Slack, slack! Tension!” was the work of a long minute. Dropping the sail and lashing the rigging aboard took longer, and we had time to appreciate the daylight and the calm sea. We were unlucky to break the forestay, though lucky to do it by day; unhappy to need repairs, but glad to be so close to shore. Motoring through St. George’s Town Cut near midnight, we felt relief mingled with humility and plenty of gratitude toward providence.

When I woke up, I woke up on Bermuda. This unlikely seamount, preserved by the same coral reefs that threaten sailors, has its own story of marine protection. At the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences (BIOS) Chris Flook told me that Bermuda has protected sea turtles from overfishing since 1620. 1620! ­BIOS Ocean Academy director Kaitlin Noyes explained Bermuda has the Atlantic’s northernmost coral reefs, and they are critical ­libraries of marine ecology while southern reefs bleach and suffer.

I swam with Chris and Kaitlin beside North Rock, marked on my chart as a shallow to avoid like grim death in a sailboat, but when seen from underwater, it’s a gloriously thriving ecology of brain corals and star corals circled by parrotfish, grouper and myriad creatures. This ecosystem is one of several dozen MPAs in Bermuda, and it was heartening to feel that same ocean that rocked me from Maine course through the healthy fans and branches of living coral.

38.1° N and 67.4° W. Wind SW 12. Seas 3 to 4 feet.

After nine days of sweaty boat fiddling, I left Bermuda with a new crew and a new forestay. It was a relief to be moving, a necessary change to the tedious round of asking after parts not delivered and speaking politely to tardy mechanics. We motored out with the sunset behind us, and once we could leave North Rock well to port, turned north under full sails. Whitney, my wife, is a good sailor. She loves nothing better than snorkeling among tropical fish, and she had pointed to Bermuda’s oversize footprint on the big chart and said, “Imagine all those miles of reef, all those fish. What a paradise.” Now she was eager to see dolphins, whales and sharks. On that same plotting chart, I penciled quick circles around the marine sanctuaries, preserves and monuments in our path to Newport, Rhode Island. These were the places she was most likely to encounter the sea life that inspired her sailing. One of the newest MPAs is the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, 120 miles southeast of Cape Cod. We hadn’t planned to go near it on this leg, but on day three, the Gulf Stream hit us with 25 knots of breeze from the southwest and then a series of westerly squalls that soaked our plans in flying spray. Ten hard hours saw us 60 miles east of our line and barely a daysail from the new monument. Unlike, say, Devil’s Tower or Gettysburg, sea canyons are not something you can spot from a distance or tour in a bus. But a healthy ocean has its language too, and in the morning, Whitney spotted a spout to starboard, and then another. Before long, she had the rhythm and guided us to the long forms of North Atlantic fin whales feeding in the middle distance.

The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument was designated in 2016 to manage the waters above three canyons 4,000 meters deep and four undersea mountains with 2,000 meters of relief from the ocean floor. The monument aims to shape spawning grounds and habitat into a pocket of resilience amid an ocean of pollution and fishing gear.

41.47° N and 71.32° W. Ida Lewis Yacht Club, Newport.

MPAs are a bright spot in the gloomy conversation about ocean health. We reached Newport in 115 hours from St. George’s, in time for July Fourth festivities on the harbor: hundreds of boats and people, fireworks and music. These happy mariners seemed ready to agree with Arthur C. Clarke’s observation, “How inappropriate to call this planet Earth when it is quite clearly Ocean.” There was a sea story in each of these skiffs, dories, tugs, racers and ferries. Nellie’s Bermuda trip was one tiny sailing tale, but in its brushes with ocean conservation it carried an optimistic message to offset climate-change fatalism.

The voyage to Bermuda and back showed me a lot of ocean, and successful efforts for protecting it. In my log’s notes, a white-sided dolphin leapt clear of the Gulf Stream, coral fans fluttered in the Bermuda current, humpbacks fed in Stellwagen Bank — all these gave me hope for a cruising future that includes turtles, corals and the great whales that brighten even our foggiest days.

– – –

Jeffrey McCarthy is director of the environmental humanities graduate program at the University of Utah.

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I am a sailing scuba diver; one wall of my living room is painted deep “teal ocean” and hung with an enlarged photo of me diving — wearing a pink weight belt and pastel-colored regulator hoses — during a long cruising stay on Oddly Enough, our Peterson 44, at Kavieng in Papua New Guinea. But I’d never sailed or dived at Wake Island, and I’d certainly never gone down to 2,100 meters. This changed in August 2016, when I virtually joined the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s ship for ocean exploration and research, Okeanos Explorer, for an expedition that filmed the deep ocean bottom around Wake from a remotely operated vehicle (ROV). I joined it as a “citizen scientist,” watching live on my computer screen.

The Campaign to Address Pacific Monument Science, Technology and Ocean Needs, or CAPSTONE, is a three-year mission to explore deepwater marine protected areas in the central and western Pacific Ocean, initiated by NOAA and its partners. These include some of the last pristine marine ecosystems on the planet and harbor numerous protected species. Almost every dive finds previously unidentified life-forms and underwater formations such as mud volcanoes and hydrothermal vents. Wake Island’s waters are also rich in archaeological sites for ships and aircraft lost during World War II. Most deepwater areas, though poorly studied, are of high interest to federal and state agencies because of their potential resources. It has a dark side, however. Like contract archaeology, Okeanos surveys areas ripe for resource extraction to see what would be destroyed. But CAPSTONE is also intended to garner support for preserving what’s there, and for that, the bigger the public presence the better.

Expedition cruise legs can take three weeks, with two scientists on board Okeanos — a geology lead and a biology lead — plus crews to run the ship and two ROVs: Deep Discoverer (D2), with a fabulous video camera that films high-definition close-ups of stuff I wouldn’t notice diving, and Seirios, which goes down on a separate cable and hovers above, filming D2 and the surrounding ocean floor, which it lights up for perhaps the first time ever. Dive and mapping operations are streamed live, so every day this past year from mid-July to August, at about 4:30 p.m. (8:30 a.m. Fiji time), I’d think about settling in to watch.

In the Okeanos digital control room, the scientists observe and record the dive and the ROV crew operates its vehicles — including the mechanical arm that collects samples — guided by computer screens. Besides a livestream of what is seen and heard on the NOAA website, there is a large online chat room of scientists and others on voice call to help identify the sea creatures and rock formations. For all its seriousness, it’s also a show; each leg has different science leads who set the tone, and their interpersonal chemistry shapes the time we spend together. On the Wake Island leg, Chris Kelley and Jasper Konter, both of the University of Hawaii, are classic science nerds. They love their chosen fields, they love awful jokes (especially about fish) and their laughter livens the Internet.

Wake Island, 1,500 miles from Guam and 2,400 miles from Hawaii, was first discovered by Europeans in 1568, when Spanish explorer Álvaro de Mendaña de Neyra visited the atoll. At 19° 16’ N, 166° 38’ E, it’s an occasional stopover for cruising sailboats heading across the northern Pacific. A boat basin inside the pass houses support vessels for the U.S. Air Force, which runs the island. There is a narrow reef shelf on the ocean side of the pass suitable for sailboat anchoring, but overnight is generally all that’s done.

The Wake Island voyage ended after diving and mapping isolated seamounts on its track from Guam to Wake to Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands. In September, Okeanos docked in Hawaii and offloaded specimens of life and rock it collected over the year like Noah’s ark traveling the sea. Voyages in 2017 include the Howland and Baker unit of the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument and the Phoenix Islands Protected Area. If you’ve ever wondered what might be lurking below while cruising the Pacific, join Okeanos here for a peek at the magnificent deep underwater world. — Ann Hoffner

The post Deep Sea Wonders appeared first on Cruising World.

Once all the paperwork was done and the foundations were installed on the bottom of the ocean, it took only about a month for the first offshore wind turbines to become fully erected. And then, they were there: five of them, all in a line, standing watch over Rhode Island’s Block Island Sound like Don Quixote’s giants, spinning around and around with 240-foot-long blades to produce what will eventually become 90 percent of Block Island’s energy supply in the next few years.

And should all go well with these five wind turbines, there’s already a plan in place for the next chapter of offshore wind energy. Deepwater Wind, the company responsible for building the first five offshore wind turbines ever constructed in United States waters, has already announced that it intends to build another 200 turbines in Rhode Island waters over the next five years.

Deepwater Wind isn’t the only company in America aiming to capitalize on the rise of the offshore wind industry. The federal government recently awarded 11 leases off the coastlines of New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maryland and Virginia for the purpose of companies building more wind turbines. In California, another company, called Trident Winds, has just started working on a project to create 100 “floating offshore wind systems” (FOWs, as they’re called).

What does all this mean for sailors traveling through these waters?

All Eyes on Britain

If there’s one country that the United States is paying attention to when it comes to offshore wind power, it’s the United Kingdom. As of 2015, at last count there were 1,650 wind turbines in U.K. waters — 175 of them alone in the London Array, the largest offshore wind farm in the world. In 2008, after the United Kingdom overtook Denmark to become the world leader in offshore wind power, it was estimated that it possessed over a third of Europe’s total offshore wind resources. With all that potential, it’s no wonder the country is building up its capacity as quickly as it can.

Helping in the process is the Royal Yachting Association, which for many years has facilitated the conversation between recreational sailors and the offshore wind industry.

“Our feedback to date from our members is that they haven’t had any problems sailing through wind farms,” said RYA cruising manager Stuart Carruthers in an interview with U.K. magazine Yachting Monthly in 2012. “But it should be stressed that the wind farms we’re talking about are limited to 10 square kilometers and a maximum of 30 turbines, so the experience from that isn’t a direct read across to some of the bigger projects that are being produced.”

In 2015, the RYA published a list of recommendations about how wind-farm developers can minimize collisions by maintaining a minimum height for where turbine blades can pass. The list also called for a standardized layout of rows and columns for all wind farms.

“The RYA is representing to the developers through the government the need to maintain proper marking, to make sure exclusion zones are not put in place around wind farms, and that they meet minimum design parameters for rotor height and charted depth so that should you choose to sail through them, you still can,” said Carruthers.

X Marks the Spot

For many sailors in New England, the Block Island Wind Project hearkens back to memories of the failed Cape Wind venture from the early 2000s. Controversy erupted when developers proposed the construction of 130 turbines off Horseshoe Shoal in Nantucket Sound. Opposition came from nearly every side: fishermen, American Indian groups, and property owners concerned that wind turbines would ruin their view.

A common billboard held up by protesters read, “Right Idea, Wrong Place!” That message spoke to the opinion that wind energy was the correct move, but Horseshoe Shoal was a terrible place to erect more than 100 turbines. But where does one place a wind farm so everyone is happy?

To answer this question, Rhode Island created the Ocean Special Area Management Plan and invited numerous user groups, including recreational sailors, to come forward and identify areas of the ocean they frequented. Because of their proximity to Block Island, officials from the local Storm Trysail Club were invited to share their expertise. Members of the community identified major routes used by the cruising community as well as areas where buoy races frequently occur.

Call it smart ocean planning or simply due diligence, but many feel that the Block Island Wind Project sailed through the federal permitting process because it worked so closely with the people who use the waters so frequently. Everyone from the Lobstermen’s Association to the United States Navy was brought into the process to give as much insight as possible about the prospective sites for the wind farm.

Impact on Cruisers

Offshore of Block Island, the United States Coast Guard established a 500-yard safety zone around each of the wind-­turbine foundations while they were being constructed. Now that the turbines have been completed, however, boats are free to transit as close to the wind turbines as they wish, provided no maintenance is ongoing.

“There is no safety zone or exclusion zone when the project is in operation,” says Meaghan Wims, from Deepwater Wind. “Now that the turbines are constructed, those restrictions are no longer intact. Boats are free to roam.”

If you do plan on sailing through the Block Island Wind Farm, or any other wind farm, be aware that depending on the height of your mast, you could run the risk of a collision with turbine blades. In the case of the Block Island Wind Farm, vessels with masts higher than 85 feet should take caution while navigating very close to turbines.

From a navigation standpoint, wind turbines can be considered a nuisance, but there are also some perceived benefits. The USCG considers the turbines to be aids to navigation, and they can serve as reference points for sailors; individual wind turbines and the perimeter of the wind farm will be represented on updated NOAA navigation charts. And although the USCG prohibits sailors from mooring on or climbing up wind-turbine platforms, mariners could tie up to them in the case of an emergency.

In a survey conducted by the RYA, over 80 percent of respondents who sailed through a wind farm had no trouble navigating, and nearly a third of the respondents rated the experience as a positive one.

Sailors who have transited through Block Island Sound are well aware of how much wind blows through the region, so the introduction of wind turbines should come as no surprise. For residents of Block Island, who currently rely on expensive diesel generators for their energy, the switch to offshore wind power will come as a welcome relief.

Freelance environmental writer Tyson Bottenus is passionate about the marine environment and has worked with Sailors for the Sea and NOAA Fisheries.

The post Wind Power on the Horizon appeared first on Cruising World.

Sailing is a great way to ­reduce your carbon footprint; however, that doesn’t necessarily mean that ­being a cruiser is living green. It’s important to consider our impact on the environment and how to make smart choices to help preserve the very places we love to sail. Here are 10 easy ways to be a greener cruiser:

1. Clean a Beach:
There is nothing more beautiful than a pristine beach and ­nothing more depressing than a shoreline littered with garbage. Next time you dinghy ashore, take a few minutes to pick up and properly ­dispose of refuse that has washed up where you land. Another great way to give back to the beautiful places you get to visit is to organize a beach cleanup day in your favorite anchorage. After all, when the ocean is our playground, it’s up to us to keep it clean.

2. BYO Bags:
Sadly, these days it’s not ­uncommon to find plastic bags floating in the ocean. When provisioning, refuse plastic ­shopping bags and bring your own reusable cloth bags instead. There are several on the market that fold small and flat and are easy to keep tucked in the pocket of a backpack or purse for unexpected purchases. If you do bring plastic bags home, ­reuse them as trash bags or recycle them instead of just tossing them in the garbage.

3. Choose Cloth Napkins and Cleaning Cloths:
To cut down on garbage and save storage space, use cloth napkins and microfiber cleaning cloths ­instead of disposable napkins and paper towels. To keep things ­hygienic, sew a small piece of colored thread to each napkin and assign everyone on board a color. To sanitize and to remove stubborn grease stains, boil napkins in clean water with a squirt of dish soap periodically.

4. Say No to Paper Plates:
Paper plates might seem like a quick and easy way to save on water — and dishes — but few brands are actually biodegradable. Never toss paper plates ­directly overboard. Instead buy stainless-steel, durable plastic or melamine bowls and plates; a small investment will last years.

5. Eat Local:
Most cruisers shop at local markets for fresh produce but might not stop to think where canned or dried goods and meat come from. Buying locally sourced and produced foodstuffs not only supports the area economy, but also cuts down on emissions produced when items are shipped internationally.

6. Unplug and Unwind:
We all rely on electronic ­devices on board, but how much is too much? Nothing sparks a conversation among cruisers like ­power consumption and production, and today’s electronics are power-hungry. Try making a resolution to unplug for a ­period of time each day. Not only will you be doing your house bank a favor, but you might find it recharges your batteries too.

7. Harness Nature’s Super­powers:
Passive power production has never been easier or more ­efficient. Over the last decade, solar panel manufacturers have found ways to boost power output while reducing size and cost. Installing solar panels is an easy and effective way to cut down on diesel consumption. In addition, fitting a wind or hydro generator will allow you to make power day and night, rain or shine.

8. Properly Dispose of Used Oil and Old Engine Filters:
Never dump old oil or ­filters overboard, no matter how far out at sea you are. ­After routine engine maintenance, take your used oil and filters ashore for proper ­disposal. If you’re in an area that doesn’t have dedicated waste-oil collection, try asking at a ­local gas station or car ­dealer for tips on where to dump it, or be prepared to carry it on board until you reach a ­facility in a larger port.

9. Try a Little R&R:
Reduce and recycle, that is. Making small changes on board can make a big ­impact, so try simple things like ­installing LED bulbs and foot- or hand-operated water pumps to cut power and water consumption. In the galley, switch out electric mixers and coffee makers for manual appliances. Sailing is hardly life in the fast lane, so instead of automatically turning on the engine and burning diesel when the wind dies, try drifting for a while, if conditions permit.

10.Use Environmentally Sensitive Cleaning Products:
Sometimes we forget that everything that goes down the drain goes overboard. To minimize pollution, use biodegradable body wash and shampoo, dish soap, laundry detergent, and cleaning products when possible. Or reach in your galley and clean with vinegar and baking ­soda; it gets rid of salt and stains without damaging surfaces or the environment.

— Heather Francis

The post 10 Quick Tips for Green Cruising appeared first on Cruising World.

More than any other group I know, sailors are keenly attuned to the nuances of wind, waves, tides, storms, calms, barometric pressure, clouds and temperature. A new term in the sailor’s glossary, climate change, is going to be a factor in all things sailing for the rest of our lives and beyond.

A report released in December 2013 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted an 8- to 10-degree F rise in temperature by the end of this century. For people who pay attention to such things, those numbers are alarming. In matter-of-fact scientific monotones, the atmospheric physicists who wrote this new assessment envision a world much changed from the one we know today, and their findings and predictions pose troubling questions for long-distance sailors: How is climate change going to affect winds, ocean currents and weather patterns around the world? How is climate going to alter the way we voyage across oceans in the coming decades?

To get a real-world fix on answers to those questions, I sat down with Dr. Philip J. Rasch, a rock-star climate modeler at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington. I asked Rasch — himself a sailor — to explain in broad terms what we can expect from climate change in the near future.

PV: As you know, most bluewater cruisers do their open-water sailing in a belt that girdles the globe between 25 degrees N and 25 degrees S. What, if any, are the changes in weather patterns that climate models see emerging as long-term trends in tropical and subtropical waters?

Rasch: There are many different ways to answer that question. Over the last century we’ve seen ambiguities in wind and wave patterns around the globe, and for the purposes of understanding how climate is ­influencing those circulation patterns, it’s not helpful to isolate the tropics from the midlatitudes, or the midlatitudes from the higher latitudes. They’re all tied together. That said, there are clear signals, or signatures, for strengthening wind speeds in some regions and diminishing wind speeds in others. In the tropical zone, storms are increasing in strength, but it’s unclear yet whether they’re increasing in frequency.

Related to that, another signature that seems to be robust is changes in wave height in the midlatitudes of the Pacific and Atlantic. This may be influenced by a climate feature near the equator called the intertropical convergence zone. This zone seems to have shifted southward over the last century. That shift determines where the maximum precipitation falls, where it rains on land, and how cyclones get steered over water. If you’re a farmer in Africa or a fisherman in the Atlantic, or sailing in those areas, that’s going to be a very big deal.

PV: Some of the changes in the climate models seem counterintuitive, such as diminished wind speeds in tropical and sub­tropical zones and an increase in trade winds. What causes that?

Rasch: When we talk about climate, as opposed to weather, we have to think about how the wind fields and ocean currents distribute heat around the planet. More energy tends to get soaked up in the equatorial regions, and that heat gets redistributed to the rest of the planet by wind and ocean ­currents. The polar regions radiate some of that heat back into space. Winds carry equatorial heat to the poles, along with greenhouse gases, in great circulation patterns that have been controlling our global climate for centuries.

We’ve detected a spinning down of those circulation patterns, a diminishing of winds associated with those ­patterns, in the tropics. Some circulations go north and south while others go east and west. These circulation patterns, and percolation systems in the ocean, deep under­water, move heat around the planet. Right now, all of those patterns of heat distribution are in a state of flux.

PV: What do climate models tell us about the influence of El Niño and La Niña events in coming years?

Rasch: The models predict that these patterns are going to intensify. There’s also a suggestion that the El Niño southern oscillation patterns are shifting eastward. Rising ocean temperatures will change El Niño’s intensity and position, and this will have far-reaching consequences, a kind of cascade of effects. The coastlines of Peru and Chile, for example, enjoy an upwelling of nutrients from deep in the ocean that brings food to their fisheries. Small changes in those currents and ocean temps can have big impacts downstream. Fisheries scientists in the Southern Hemisphere are very worried about this because it has the potential to affect huge population centers in South America and Africa.

PV: You’ve said that ­sailors tend to think of weather patterns over water, when in fact many of those patterns are set in motion by phenomena on land. Could you tell us a bit more about that, and how climate change will influence those patterns?

Rasch: A good example of this begins in Africa. There’s been a shift in rainfall patterns over Africa that’s associated with this intertropical convergence zone that I mentioned. The Sahel region of Africa, a band between the Sahara and the savanna, is drying up as a result of precipitation being moved into new circulation patterns. This climate ­feature over Africa also sets loose ­easterly wave patterns in the atmosphere that are the progenitors of tropical cyclones. Small shifts in weather patterns over land can have huge influences on what happens over the oceans.

PV: We hear a lot of conflicting speculation about climate change influencing both the strength and frequency of major storms. What can the models tell us about emerging storm patterns?

Rasch: Let me answer that by saying a lot of people are worried about the effects of surface flow, like the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic and the Kuroshio Current in the Pacific. These warm rivers of water in the oceans carry heat away from the equatorial region and send it north toward the poles. We’re very interested in getting a better understanding of how those circulation patterns will influence storms and the distribution of heat to the Pacific Northwest and northern Europe.

These are complex ­systems. Warmed water is carried north, and then another circulation pattern returns the cooled water to the equatorial region, like a continual heat sink. This circulation takes place over centuries, but it has a huge influence on ocean temperatures and storm ­formation. The more heat carried in the surface water, the more intense the storms will be that are fueled by that energy. This is called the meridional overturning circulation, or MOC, and while most people have never heard of it, it’s very important, especially as ice sheets in the Antarctic and Greenland melt at faster and faster rates.

PV: So Greenland ice melt could play a role in the formation of tropical storms?

Rasch: Yes, it already does. You have to look at the storm track regions across the planet. Each one is different, but ­overall, storm track regions are projected to move closer to the poles. … As they move closer to the poles in these wavy, meandering currents of air, the amplitude of the storms is also projected to change.

PV: If you were planning a long-distance cruise with your family, which feature of climate change would loom large?

Rasch: As the planet continues to warm, there’s the expectation that wave heights at midlatitudes will continue to get higher. Tropical cyclones and hurricanes are going to get stronger. In the overall pattern, wet places are going to get wetter, and the dry places drier.

Ten years ago, the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] reports weren’t terribly concerned about sea-level rise, but they are now. That shows you how fast things have changed.

As more ice melts in the polar regions and the oceans warm, the volume of water not only increases, but the water itself expands. We used to think low-lying island groups like the Maldives, in the Indian Ocean, were safe through the end of the century. No longer. The Maldives will be underwater in the next few decades.

PV: That’s a sobering prediction.

Rasch: Yes, it is. In terms of climate, we’re in uncharted waters.

Pacific Northwest sailor Paul VanDevelder is a regular contributor to the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times on the environment and natural resources.

The post The Climate Conundrum appeared first on Cruising World.

As the first step in a multistage plan to remove half the plastic from the Pacific in a decade’s time, Dutch entrepreneur Boyan Slat and the team from his Ocean Cleanup project launched their Mega Expedition in the summer of 2015. With some 30 vessels traveling through the North Pacific Gyre, including 20 racing yachts, the goal was to conduct research to help map the spatial distribution and density of the rubbish found in what’s come to be known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. I was fortunate enough to be the skipper of one of those raceboats.

I arrived with three other crew in Honolulu last August to deliver Chris Hemans’ Newport Beach-based Rogers 46, Varuna, back from the Transpac. Along the way to California, we’d be gathering data for Ocean Cleanup by conducting visual surveys for trash and logging our finds with an intuitive smartphone app. We would also be conducting one-hour trawls with a device called a manta trawl to collect water samples. Our young, keen crew was excited and honored at the prospect of using our good fortune as sailors to benefit such a worthwhile and important cause.

Close-reaching north out of Hawaii for more than 1,000 nautical miles, Varuna — a true reaching machine and a thrill to sail — ate up the distance rapidly. Turning the corner at about 37 degrees N, we began heading east and gradually got into the zone for data collection, which extended from 154 degrees W to 130 degrees W, and 20 degrees N to 40 degrees N. We installed a small collection sock called a cod-end on the manta trawl and collected plastic by towing it 130 feet behind the port side of the boat for an hour at a time. Bringing the manta trawl back to the transom, we’d swap out cod-ends, tow for another hour, and so on. On our first day in the collection zone, we pulled four hour-long trawls.

What we found was incredible. In most of the quart-size cod-end samples, we discovered countless bits of plastic, ranging from small specks to 16-ounce water bottles, broken pieces of laundry baskets, and other junk. There were bottle caps, strands of monofilament fishing line, and little bits of Styrofoam. We also found in every single sample a small ecosystem, with sailor jellies, crabs of various sizes, and other tiny sea creatures scurrying around.

This was my 10th trip between Hawaii and the mainland, and I must admit to never fully appreciating the concentration of garbage before this voyage. Usually, whether on delivery or racing, I’m focused on sailing the boat at speed and therefore miss most of the small plastic, seeing only the big stuff. When we were slowed to a crawl with the specific purpose of looking for plastic, however, a very scary picture was painted. Moving slowly in glassy conditions, it was clear that there were tiny pieces floating everywhere the eye could see, with larger pieces distributed all around. The state of our beloved Pacific Ocean is truly disconcerting. Making matters even more alarming, our latitude at 37 degrees N was several hundred miles north of the most impacted area.

After just one day in the Gyre and with four trawls completed, a new breeze began to fill in from the north, creating quick close-reaching conditions back to the States, which made trawling a challenge. Varuna again began putting up big numbers and quickly made it to 130 degrees W and out of the research box. Along the way, though, we managed to check off three morning-time trawls, bringing our total up to seven. It wasn’t as many trawls as we had originally hoped for, but we knew our data was good, so we were pleased that we had done our best to help the cause.

Not long after Varuna and other boats began arriving back in West Coast ports with their manta trawls and cod-ends full of plastic, the project’s 171-foot mothership, Ocean Starr, arrived in San Francisco to a hero’s welcome of supporters and media. When the large oceangoing research vessel opened up her payload of plastic and rubbish, she told a story, and a sobering one at that. By all estimates, there appears to be more plastic in the North Pacific Gyre than originally feared. Rather than be discouraged at the findings, however, we were only further inspired to help Ocean Cleanup and its supporters achieve their mission.

As environmental issues are brought to the forefront of worldwide debates, the momentum behind those issues becomes too great to ignore for us as a global community. Fortunately, there are organizations like Ocean Cleanup that are attempting to make a difference. Inactivity is no longer an option. For the latest on Ocean Cleanup, visit the organization’s website, www.theoceancleanup.com.

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From the shores of Hawaii, and the shores of the mainland the Mega Expedition has begun… 24 sailboats are out in the middle of the Pacific collecting more plastic measurements in 3 weeks than have been collected in the past 40 years combined. Any day now we expect to hear from Stella Diamant, the Mega Expedition Coordinator, onboard Extreme H2O as they traverse the notorious Pacific Garbage Patch where so much of these plastics congregate. ASA will be conducting satellite interviews with The Ocean Cleanup team detailing what they are seeing and how their historic missing is progressing. Stay tuned for more updates!

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