This past October, I saw one of the most interesting exhibits in more than 500 new cruising sailboats I’ve reviewed over two decades. It was the Arcona 435Z, built in Sweden and introduced by Graham Balch of Green Yachts in San Francisco. Balch describes his business as “a new brokerage dedicated to the electric revolution on the water,” and it was the “Z” in the boat’s name, which stands for “zero emissions,” that made this boat so interesting. This was the first electric propulsion system—not hybrid but all-electric—I’d ever seen on a cruising sailboat.

Electric propulsion isn’t new. Since 1879, electric motors have propelled boats; a fleet of some four-dozen electric launches transported visitors around the 1893 Colombian Exposition in Chicago. But cruising sailboats are not launches, and the open sea is not a protected canal. When we’re using cruising boats as they’re meant to be used, they seldom end their day plugged into a shore-power outlet. Cruising boats comprise many devices —stove, refrigerator, freezer, windlass, winches, autopilot, radar, lights—whose power typically comes from a tank of fossil fuel. And today’s cruising sailors are accustomed to using diesel auxiliary power to motor through lulls or punch into headwinds and seas.

Starting about 15 years ago, we saw a wave of diesel-electric and hybrid propulsion systems on production and custom cruising boats (see “Perpetuated Motion,” CW, March 2005). Both of those systems ultimately start with an onboard internal-combustion engine. A diesel-electric propulsion system relies on a running genset to directly power the electric motor that turns the propeller. A hybrid system relies on batteries to power the electric motor, plus an internal-combustion genset to recharge the batteries. One of the promises of a hybrid system is the ability to regenerate electrical power. Regeneration means using boatspeed under sail to turn the propeller, whose spinning shaft sends electrons from the electric motor back through an electronic controller to recharge the batteries. In such a system, the boat’s propeller is both an electrical load (when running under power) and a charging source (when sailing in regeneration mode).

The Arcona 435Z was different from both of these systems: It incorporates no onboard fossil-fuel engine at all. Instead, it has a bank of lithium batteries, several solar panels, and a proprietary propulsion leg that looks like a saildrive. “This boat,” Balch said, “has the very first production unit in the world of Oceanvolt’s newest electric propulsion system, called the ServoProp.”

For our sea trial, Balch was joined by Derek Rupe, CEO of Oceanvolt USA. “If you can sail the boat and you have some solar, you can go anywhere in the world, and you can make all your power underway while you go,” Rupe said. When we spoke in October 2020, he touted three high-profile sailors who were using the Oceanvolt electric propulsion system: Alex Thomson, for his Hugo Boss Open 60 Vendée Globe program; Jimmy Cornell, for his Elcano 500 expedition; and Riley Whitelum and Elayna Carausu, who had been teasing their new boat for months on their popular Sailing La Vagabonde YouTube channel.

The efficiency of Oceanvolt’s ServoProp and the regeneration from it is the promised game-changer in each of these boats. The ServoProp is a leg with a ­feathering propeller that can be set for optimal pitch in three modes: forward, reverse and regeneration.

“You don’t need fuel,” Rupe said. “You don’t need to dock; you can go anywhere you want to go and always have the power for living and propulsion.”

That’s the promise. But are there also pitfalls?

Innovation and Risk

Marine electric propulsion is an emerging technology. Compared with the mature and settled technology of diesel engines and lead-acid batteries, electric-propulsion systems—with their electronic controllers and lithium batteries—are in a stage of development best described as adolescent. Every sailor has his or her own tolerance for technical innovation. For the promise of fewer ­seconds per mile, grand-prix-racing sailors willingly trade a high risk of expensive damage to the sails, rig or the boat’s structure itself; cruising sailors, by contrast, tend to favor yearslong reliability in their equipment as they seek miles per day.

Folks who identify as early adopters take special joy in the first-wave discoveries of a new technology; if they’re clear-eyed about supporting an ongoing experiment, they see themselves as partners with the developers, accepting failures as opportunities for learning. Sailors motivated primarily by changing the trajectory of climate change might be especially willing to modify their behavior to limit their own output of greenhouse gases. Investing in any emerging technology asks you to start with a clear assessment of your own risk tolerance. We’ll return to this theme with one or two real-life examples.

The American Boat and Yacht Council, founded in 1954, sets recommended standards for systems installed on recreational boats. For decades, ABYC has published standards related to installations of diesel and gasoline engines, as well as electrical systems based around lead-acid batteries. By contrast, it was only three years ago that ABYC came out with its first electric-propulsion standard (revised July 2021). And only last year it published its first technical-information report on lithium batteries (a technical-information report is an early step toward a future standard). The takeaway is that if you need help servicing your diesel engine or electrical system built around lead-acid batteries, you can pull into any reasonable-size port and find competent technicians to help you. With electric propulsion and lithium batteries, that pool of skilled talent is significantly scarcer.

To say that a technology is mature simply means that we’ve learned to live with it, warts and all, but that it holds few remaining surprises. Certainly, diesel-propulsion and lead-acid-battery technologies each leave plenty of room for improvement. When a charge of fuel ignites in the combustion ­chamber of a diesel engine, some three-quarters of the energy is lost in heat and the mechanical inefficiencies of converting reciprocating motion to rotation. Lead-acid batteries become damaged if we routinely discharge more than half of their capacity. During charging, they’re slow to take the electrons we could deliver.

Lithium batteries are comparatively full of promise. Their power density is far greater than that of lead-acid batteries, meaning they’re much lighter for a given capacity. They’re capable of being deeply discharged, which means you can use far more of the bank’s capacity, not merely the first half. And they accept a charge much more quickly; compare that to several hours a day running an engine to keep the beers iced down.

But the pitfalls? Let’s start with ABYC TE-13, Lithium Ion Batteries. Some of its language is bracing. “Lithium ion batteries are unlike lead-acid batteries in two important respects,” the report says. “1) The electrolyte within most lithium ion batteries is flammable. 2) Under certain fault conditions, lithium ion batteries can enter a condition known as thermal runaway, which results in rapid internal heating. Once initiated, it is a self-perpetuating and exothermic reaction that can be difficult to halt.”

Thermal runaway? Difficult to halt? Self-perpetuating?

“Typically, the best approach is to remove heat as fast as possible, which is most effectively done by flooding the battery with water,” TE-13 continues, “although this may have serious consequences for the boat’s electrical systems, machinery, buoyancy, etc.”

If you were following the news in January 2013, you might remember the ­story of Japan Airlines Flight 008. Shortly after landing at Boston’s Logan Airport, a mechanic opened the aft ­electronic equipment bay of the Boeing 787-8 to find smoke and flames billowing from the auxiliary-power unit. The fire extinguisher he used didn’t put out the flames. Eventually Boston firefighters put out the fire with Halotron, but when removing the still-hissing batteries from the plane, one of the ­firefighters was burned through his ­professional protective gear.

Samsung Galaxy cellphones, MacBook Pro laptops, powered skateboards—in the past decade, these and other devices have been recalled after their lithium batteries burned up. In that period, several high-end custom boats were declared a total loss following failures from lithium batteries. In March 2021, a 78-foot Norwegian hybrid-powered tour boat, built in 2019 with a 790 kW capacity battery bank, experienced thermal runaway that kept firefighters on watch for several days after the crew safely abandoned the ship.

Yes, experts are learning a lot about how to mitigate the risks around lithium batteries. But we’re still on the learning curve.

ABYC’s TE-13 “System Design” section starts, “All lithium-ion battery ­systems should have a battery ­management system (BMS) installed to prevent damage to the battery and provide for battery shutoff if potentially dangerous conditions exist.” It defines a bank’s “safe operating envelope” according to such parameters as high- and low-voltage limits, charging and discharging temperature limits, and charging and ­discharging current limits.

Graham Balch takes these safety recommendations a step further: “To our knowledge, the BMS has to monitor at the cell level. With most batteries, the BMS monitors at the module level.” The difference? “Let’s say you have 24 cells inside the battery module, and three of them stop working. Well, the other 21 have to work harder to compensate for those three. And that’s where thermal events occur.”

Balch followed the story of the Norwegian tour boat this past spring. He believes that the battery installation in that case didn’t meet waterproofing standards: “The hypothesis is that due to water intrusion, there was reverse polarity in one or more of the cells, which is worse than cells simply not working. It means that they’re actively working against the other cells. But if the BMS is monitoring only at the module level, you wouldn’t know it.”

On the Green Yachts website, Graham lists five battery manufacturers whose BMS regimes monitor at the cell level. “If I were sailing on an electric boat, whether it be commercial or recreational, I would feel comfortable with having batteries from these five companies and no other,” he said.

The broader takeaway for today’s sailors is that lithium batteries bring their own sets of problems and solutions, which are different from those of conventional propulsion and power-supply technologies. A reasonably skilled sailor could be expected to change fuel filters or bleed a diesel engine if it shuts down in rough conditions. With lithium-ion batteries aboard, an operator needs to understand the causes and remedies of thermal runaway, and be ready to respond if the BMS shuts down the boat’s power.

Real-World Electric Cruising Boats

When we met Oceanvolt’s Derek Rupe a year ago, he and his wife had taken their all-electric boat to the Bahamas and back the previous season. Before that, he’d been installing electric-propulsion packages for six years on new Alerion 41s and other refit projects. “My real passion is on the technical side of things—installations, really getting that right. That’s half the picture. The technology is there, but it needs to be installed correctly.”

When talking to Rupe, I immediately encountered my first learning curve. I posed questions about the Oceanvolt system in amps and amp-hours; he responded in watts and kilowatt-hours. This was yet another example of the different mindset sailors of electric boats need to hold. Why? Because most cruising boats have just one or two electrical systems: DC and AC. The AC system might operate at 110 or 220 volts; the DC side might operate at 12 or 24 volts. On your own boat, that voltage is a given. From there we tend to think in terms of amps needed to power a load, and amp-hours of capacity in our battery banks. Going back to basics, the power formula tells us that power (watts) equals electrical potential (volts) times current (amps). If your boat’s electrical system is 12 volts and you know that your windlass is rated at 400 watts, it follows that the windlass is rated to draw 33 amps.

But an all-electric boat might comprise several systems at different voltages. A single battery bank might supply cabin lights at 12 volts DC; winches and windlasses at 24 volts DC; the propulsion motor at 48 volts DC; and an induction stove, microwave and television at 110 volts AC. A DC-to-DC power converter steps the voltage up or down, and an inverter changes DC to AC. Instead of translating through all those systems, the Oceanvolt monitor (and Derek Rupe) simply reports in watts coming in or going out of the bank.

“We keep all our thoughts in watts,” Rupe said. “Watts count in the AC induction. They count in the DC-to-DC converter. They count the solar in. They count the hydrogeneration in. And the ­power-management systems tracks it that way for shore-power in.

“On a boat like this, maybe I have 500 watts coming in the solar panels,” he continued. “So then I can think: ‘Well, my fridge is using 90 watts. My boat has an electric stove. When I cook a big meal, I can see that for every hour we cook, we lose about 10 to 12 minutes of our cruising range.’”

During his Bahamas cruising season, Rupe observed that on days that they were sailing, the combination of solar panels and hydroregeneration supplied all the power he and his wife needed. “When we weren’t sailing,” he said, “we found that we were losing 8 percent each day, in the difference from what the sun gave us to what we were using for the fridge, lights, charging our laptops, and all that stuff.”

Rupe’s solution? “Twice in Eleuthera and once outside Major’s, we went out and sailed laps for a couple of hours because the batteries were below 30 percent of capacity. It was good sailing, and the wind was coming over the shore, so we didn’t have any sea state. We did a couple of hot laps on nice beam reaches, and generated about 700 watts an hour.”

Of the three sailors Rupe touted in October 2020—Alex Thomson, Jimmy Cornell and the Sailing La Vagabonde couple—only Cornell can report back on his all-electric experiences with Oceanvolt. Alex Thomson ended his circumnavigation abruptly last November, just 20 days after the Vendée Globe start, when Hugo Boss collided with an object in the South Atlantic. And at press time in early fall 2021, Riley and Elayna had just recently announced the build of their new Rapido trimaran; keep an eye on their YouTube channel for more about their experiences with the Oceanvolt propulsion system.

As for Cornell—circumnavigator, World Cruising Routes author, creator of the transoceanic rally, and veteran of some 200,000 ocean miles—he suspended his planned Elcano 500 round-the-world expedition solely because of the Oceanvolt system in his new Outremer catamaran. His Aventura Zero Logs on the Cornell Sailing website, particularly the Electric Shock article posted on December 2, 2020, are essential reading for any sailor interested in sailing an electric boat. “Sailing around the world on an electric boat with zero emissions along the route of the first circumnavigation was such a tempting opportunity to do something meaningful and in tune with our concern for protecting the environment that my family agreed I should do it,” Cornell wrote. “What this passage has shown was that in spite of all our efforts to save energy, we were unable to regenerate sufficient electricity to cover consumption and top up the batteries.”

Cornell’s experience in that article is raw, and his tone in that moment bitterly disappointed. We recommend it as essential reading—not as a final rejection of the electric-boat concept or of Oceanvolt’s system, or even as an endorsement of Cornell’s own decision that the system didn’t work. I suspect that I may have arrived at the same conclusion. Yet given the same boat in the same conditions, one imagines that a new breed of sailor—a Graham Balch or a Derek Rupe—may have responded differently to the constraints imposed by an all-electric boat, as nearly every cruising sailor today habitually responds to the inconvenient constraints of diesel engines and lead-acid batteries.

“If you bring electric winches, electric heads and an induction stove, and then sail into a high-pressure system, you’ll set yourself up for failure,” Balch said. “You have to balance your power inputs and your power outputs.

“Sailing an electric boat is a return to the tradition of sailing that the crutch of a diesel engine has gotten us away from,” he added. “Magellan’s fleet got all the way around the world, and they didn’t have a diesel engine.”

Tim Murphy is a Cruising World editor-at-large and ­longtime Boat of the Year judge.

The post The Promises and Pitfalls of an All-Electric Yacht appeared first on Cruising World.

I am always looking for creative ways to reduce waste. So when I had a pair of wet-weather bibs that no longer kept me dry, I didn’t automatically assume they were no longer useful. If sailing has taught me anything, it is to adapt to the conditions and work with what you have.

The overalls looked good, but they didn’t work. This was evident during a wet passage from Fiji to New Caledonia. When I got off my midnight watch, I was soaked. And when I woke for my 0600 watch, I noticed flecks of the neon green all over my body. Either I was slowly morphing into the Hulk or I was covered in the bib’s waterproof lining.

I was extremely disappointed that my newish gear had failed, but there was no way to return it. That ship had sailed, literally. It seemed a waste to put the heavy, durable fabric in the bin, so I put it in my sewing stash under the bunk. Of course, like most things shoved under the bunk, it was forgotten for months. OK, maybe years, but when I rediscovered it, I knew exactly what to do.

I’d been wanting to replace my defunct heavy-duty tote bag that I use for provisioning. I needed a bag that could comfortably sling over my shoulder and had a wide enough opening for large items such as a leafy head of Napa cabbage but could be tied shut so nothing fell out on a bumpy dinghy ride home. It had to be lightweight and foldable but sturdy enough to carry at least 20 pounds. It was time to turn those old overalls into the provisioning bag of my dreams.

Read More: Green Wakes

The obvious choice was to utilize the bib and body of the overalls. After removing the elastic shoulder straps and saving them for a future project, I cut off the legs. What was left was a good-size bag with a slight hole in the bottom, but it was nothing that a few seams and details couldn’t fix. I sewed the bottom closed, and doubled the reinforcement on the seam for added strength. Then I added webbing straps and created a long tie in the center of the bag opening, using both to keep the top closed and to tie the bag when folded small.

With the remaining fabric from the legs I made a smaller bag. I used webbing from an old camera bag for the shoulder strap, incorporating a plastic hook for somewhere handy to hang a dinghy key. I also added a narrow pocket on the outside, just perfect to keep a phone or radio within reach.

Strong, lightweight and washable, these two customized bags have become a staple when I head out to provision. I love that I am avoiding single-use plastic-bag waste. As the old saying goes, everything on a boat should do two jobs.

The post Green Wakes: Upcycling Old Sailing Gear 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.

Superyachts aren’t ­typically the first things that come to mind when terms such as “sustainable” or “environmentally responsible” get bandied about. But, as with many things related to building custom-designed boats, much hinges on the ­design brief.

Take, for example, ­Spirit Yachts’ magnificent-looking Spirit 111, which was commissioned with a brief that ­challenged the UK-based builder to create “a Tesla of the seas” while also ­embracing sustainability and stealthy eco-friendly features as its reasons to be. Much like ­upscale terrestrial Teslas, the ­Spirit 111, which was launched in 2019, achieved this lofty goal ­without compromising ­aesthetics, luxury appointments or sailing performance.

The Spirit 111′s sustainability efforts start with a hull that’s built using wood and epoxy on a stainless-steel space-age frame. “The research into materials and technologies was Spirit’s efforts,” explains Nigel Stuart, Spirit Yachts’ managing director. This began with timber selection. “The majority of the hull is made from ­Douglas fir from ­Canada, where the forests are ­tightly ­managed and heavily ­regulated.” These timbers were Forest ­Stewardship Council-­certified, and Spirit Yachts took the ­additional step of ­conducting ­one-on-one conversations with foresters and timber-mill operators to thoroughly vet the supply chain.

While “green” epoxies weren’t readily available during the Spirit 111′s build, Spirit Yachts found other important ways to channel Elon Musk-like thinking. These include four BMW-built 40-kilowatt-­hour lithium-ion batteries and a 100 kW Torqeedo-built electric motor that—while the yacht is sailing—harnesses the Spirit 111′s spinning prop and drive shaft to repower the ­batteries using regeneration.

“At the time of the build, the drive system was a new product for Torqeedo, and it was designed for Spirit but with other yachts also in mind,” Stuart says. Since then, Torqeedo added this drive to its standard menu, ­meaning that the Spirit 111 project helped spur a next-generation product for other similarly minded owners and builders.

Lighting and air ­conditioning represent greedy power draws aboard most ­superyachts, but Spirit Yachts employed LED ­lighting, ­motion detectors, a variable-­speed air-conditioning ­system, and a smart control system (think Nest thermostats) to trim electrical consumption where possible. “The system is smart by turning off ­unwanted lights automatically,” says ­Stuart, adding that the yacht’s sensors detect where sailors are and provide appropriate lighting.

The combination of a smart system and ­variable-speed air-conditioning ­equipment means that the Spirit 111 can comfortably operate at ­anchor for up to four days ­without having to power up its twin 25 kW generators. Cooler still, the Spirit 111 can cross the Atlantic Ocean ­without ­consuming any fossil fuels, provided, of course, that there’s wind to ­power the yacht’s 4,843-­square-foot sail plan, which is comprised of OneSails’ 4T Forte sails that are built using ­recycled sailcloth and handled by ­energy-efficient Lewmar ­hydraulic hardware. If there’s wind and the yacht’s underway, the crew just has to activate its regeneration system.

Given that the Spirit 111′s owner plans to ­extensively cruise and race the yacht, ­sailing performance was ­another important key to the project’s success. “The ­percentage of drag is around 5 percent,” Stuart says, ­explaining details about the regeneration system.

“As well as sustainability, central to the brief was the creation of a beautiful yacht with clean lines and hidden eco-features—hence no ­solar panels or wind turbines,” ­Stuart continues, drawing ­further comparisons between the sleek look of a Tesla and the Spirit 111. “The prop can generate far more kilowatts of power than wind or solar, so solar panels and wind turbines weren’t used.”

Finally, the Spirit 111 was fitted with an energy-efficient Webasto on-demand hot-­water system, and Penguin Refrigeration’s ­UK-designed fridges and ­freezers that use highly efficient ­Cryogel ­insulation to keep the ­Chardonnay chilled and the gelato frozen, without having to overly tax the yacht’s lithium-­ion batteries or fire up the generators.

Mix elegant design with innovative gear, and you can still live large while sailing green.

David Schmidt is CW’s electronics editor and occasionally reports on other topics from his home base in the Pacific Northwest.

The post Sail Green: Spirit 111 appeared first on Cruising World.

Any sailor with even the mildest case of wanderlust has gazed longingly at the gentle curve of a tabletop globe, tracing imaginary routes from their hometowns to faraway ports with the tips of their fingers. For West Coast sailors, these lines are likely to lead south; perhaps meandering along Baja’s rugged Pacific coast and turning the corner at Cabo San Lucas, headed for a place where the water is said to be bluer, the air warmer, the fish just a bit more colorful.

This magical place, of course, is the Sea of Cortez. And if that narrow strip of water tucked between mainland Mexico’s Sonoran Desert and the Baja’s beckoning finger is, in fact, the setting of your cruising daydreams, then you are in luck, because exploring the sea has never been easier. After all, we live in a time when every bit of information necessary for an extended sailing ­journey—from downloadable charts and safety guides to ­anecdotal what-to-expect articles—is just a quick Google search away.

This wealth of easily accessible information has made traveling around the Sea of Cortez, by sailboat or otherwise, not only easier, but far more popular. Tourism has been steadily rising for years. While this growing popularity has boosted local economies and allowed for more people to experience the beauty of Mexico’s most ecologically diverse body of water, increasing international traffic has also put a strain on the natural environment, potentially putting the very things that have drawn so many of us to the sea at risk.

My impression of the Sea of Cortez, ­after my family’s first cruising season there nearly three years ago, was that it was a body of water absolutely brimming with life. It did not take long for me to realize how skewed my perception was by my unfamiliarity with the environment and its history. Seasoned cruisers were quick to inform me that while the sea is still home to an exceptional quantity of wildlife, the decline just over their lifetimes has been evident and indisputable.

I spent many hours of that first winter lying in the sun on the foredeck, fantasizing about the wonders these sailors were fortunate enough to witness in the earlier years of traveling. As a 19-year-old on the first leg of what hopefully will be a lifetime of voyaging, I was saddened by the thought that I may have already missed out on the golden years of cruising, when our oceans were still healthy and flourishing. Sadder still was the thought of what the sea could look like in the next five to 10 years, when I hope to return on my own sailboat.

Will it still be legal—or possible—to fish in the Sea of Cortez? I would wonder, as the Mexican sun beat down on my skin. Will this place that I have come to know and love so much even be recognizable in 10 years? And what could I possibly do to make sure that it is? While these doubts might be discounted as the overdramatic musings of a teenage girl, there are many people in Mexico—and the world over—asking the very same questions.

Cruisers and the Sea

I was lucky enough to meet a few of these like-minded people this past spring, when a small group from the organization Grupo de Ecología y Conservación de Islas, A.C. came to San Carlos, Mexico, to speak to cruisers about how we can help keep the Sea of Cortez the pristine place we all know and love. They showed up in San Carlos with a presentation but no plan for where or when it would take place. With the help of the local cruising community, in less than a week the group was able to find a suitable venue and get the word out about the impromptu event.

When my brother and I walked into the bar where the talk was taking place, the owner had to grab extra seats from the outdoor dining area and shuffle the audience around just so we could sit down. The room was packed. When the presentation began, people in the audience asked questions and scribbled down notes. Cruisers shared stories of their own experiences with fishing regulations, protected areas and invasive species.

The speakers, who were mostly unfamiliar with the cruising lifestyle, reacted with curiosity and gratitude for the insights and fresh perspectives. The audience expressed their equally abundant gratitude by staying after the talk to chat with the presenters. It seemed as though every boat owner within 100 miles was not only present at the event, but also engaged, concerned and eager to learn more about the state of their beloved sea.

I walked away feeling hopeful and inspired. I had learned a great deal about the surrounding ecosystem and my place in it. But more important, I had learned that other sailors genuinely care about the changes going on in the water beneath their hulls. Inspired by this realization, I decided to share Conservación de Islas’ message with the broader sailing ­community. The result is a cruising guide of sorts, written not for your benefit, fellow cruiser, but for the benefit of your future cruiser grandbabies.

Beware of Hitchhikers

Rats and other unwelcome stowaways are a danger to more than sailors’ sanity when cruising in the Sea of Cortez. Invasive rodents, as well as seeds from certain invasive plants, pose a tremendous threat to the biodiversity of the sea’s many islands. One well-known invasive rodent is the black rat. Also known as the “ship rat,” these pesky little hitchhikers have been the cause of many a gray hair for sailors for hundreds of years. If you happen to find and catch a rat aboard your vessel, however, think twice before tossing it overboard in triumphant glee. Black rats are incredibly resilient and can swim up to a mile in open water. If they make it to an island, they are likely to throw off the delicate balance of their new ecosystem by preying on native seabirds.

My initial assumption after learning about the ship rat’s diet of choice was that sea life would flourish in response to a decrease in these predatory birds. It turns out, the opposite is true. The nutrient-rich guano produced by seabirds makes up an essential part of the underwater food chain. When there is less guano making its way into the sea, small fish that rely on it lose a vital food source and begin to die off. When little fish disappear, bigger fish—the ones we like to eat—are always close behind.

Sadly, the best way to safely get rid of rats is to kill them. The thought of ending a rat’s life might be unpleasant, but far more animals are put at risk when invasive rodents take up residence in island habitats.

RELATED: Sailing Totem: Cruising Untethered in the Sea of Cortez

Not all invasive species make their presence known when hitching a ride on your vessel. Invasive plant seeds can find their way from the mainland to islands by silently clinging to the bottom of an unwitting sailor’s shoes. Once their roots are set in island soil, invasive plants compete with native flora for resources, often crowding them out completely and limiting the food supply of native herbivores. The invasive buffel grass, commonly found throughout the Sonoran Desert, spreads quickly, ­creating grasslands that not only lack biodiversity, but also increase the risk of wildfires in areas where they would otherwise be rare. Conservación de Islas recommends keeping a mat on deck or in your dinghy so that it is easy to wipe seeds off your shoes before stepping onto islands or back onto your vessel.

Invasive marine invertebrates (think mussels and barnacles) often make their way to new environments by hitching rides on sailboat hulls and in ballast tanks. Make sure to give the entire underside of your vessel a good cleaning, and empty your ballast tank—if you have one—­before entering Mexican waters to avoid transporting invertebrates from your home port to foreign environments.

The eradication of invasive species is a tedious and resource-intensive process. It is up to those who frequent the islands in the Sea of Cortez—cruisers being at the top of this list—to take preventative measures that will eliminate the need for eradication in the long run. A simple rule that sailors can follow is to bring as little as possible onto the islands we visit and leave nothing behind. This includes food scraps, such as orange peels and apple cores, that might be a source of food for invasive rodents.

Think Before You Fish

Remember that fishing ­regulations are in place for a reason. Marine protected areas were created to give ecosystems a chance to recover from the effects of overfishing and coastal development. While it’s true that sailors have played a relatively small part in the overfishing that has wreaked havoc on the Sea of Cortez, we can be respectful visitors by adhering to the regulations put in place to reverse its effects.

Over the six months I have spent island hopping in the Sea of Cortez, not once have I seen fishing regulations being enforced. Mexico’s environmental protection agency, Procuraduría Federal de Protección al Ambiente, is underfunded and spread incredibly thin when it comes to enforcing environmental law. As cruisers, we can help them out by making a conscious effort to remain aware of the laws as we make our way from anchorage to anchorage. One way to educate yourself is to talk to an official about the fishing regulations on the islands you plan to visit. Before visiting any of the sea’s protected islands, you’ll need to buy a permit at a Comisión Nacional de Áreas Naturales Protegidas office in either La Paz or Loreto, which provides the perfect opportunity to pick an environmental expert’s brain. They will have plenty of useful information and should be more than willing to share it.

If you enter the Sea of Cortez with so much as a single fish hook aboard your vessel, you will need to purchase a fishing license. This allows line fishermen to catch 10 fish per person per day. When fishing underwater with a spear gun or sling, this number goes down to five per person.

For most of us, this is a pretty generous limit. But it is important to note that stricter limits are placed on a few specific species: dorado, roosterfish, shad or tarpon, and gulf grouper. These have limits of two fish per person per day. And if you are lucky enough to catch any of these fish, it will count as five toward your daily 10-fish limit.

Visitors are also prohibited from catching mollusks and shellfish such as lobsters, mussels and clams. Unlike the catch limits on fin fish, some cruisers find this law harder to obey. Maybe the information is not known widely enough, or perhaps it’s hard for some to resist the urge to discreetly pick lobsters off the rocks when snorkeling. Regardless, it is an important rule to follow. Shellfish, as is much of the marine life in the Sea of Cortez, are in steep decline thanks to our hefty appetite for seafood.

There are no limits placed on catch-and-release fishing, as long as the fish are returned to the water in good shape. Even if you are not practicing catch-and-release, it is best to release fish that have not reached maturity. This gives them the opportunity to reproduce, helping to keep fish populations level over long periods of time. Become familiar with the average full-size length of the fish you catch most often, and stick to keeping only the fish that have clearly reached that length.

All the islands in the Sea of Cortez are protected and managed by CONANP, and have their own set of fishing restrictions. The use of spear guns and slings is prohibited in island waters. Line fishing is allowed in most areas on the islands, with a few exceptions. There are, though, no-take zones, where no fishing of any kind is allowed.

It is easy to get caught up in the ­excitement of reeling in a fish once the tug-of-war match has begun. Before you pull out the knife and start planning your fish taco dinner, stop and think about your catch. Have you reached your limit? Is the fish mature? Has it had a chance to reproduce? Are you in a no-take zone? If, after a moment of contemplation, you decide that the fish would do more for the sea than your dinner plate, consider releasing it.

When it comes to shrinking the collective cruising footprint, doing your part is relatively straightforward. In my eyes, it boils down to a simple combination of using common sense and staying informed. These tips are just a few examples of the countless ways we can work on treading lightly while voyaging. Do some Googling and get creative. Few stretches of coast on our blue planet are safe from the harmful effects of overfishing and invasive species, not to mention plastic pollution, coastal development and climate change. Researching location-specific environmental issues should be common practice when preparing for voyages anywhere in the world, not just in the Sea of Cortez.

One of the beautiful things about life at sea is the sense of accountability that comes along with being almost entirely off-grid. The illusory veil separating human life from the ocean is lifted by the cruising lifestyle. Being a steward of the sea can hardly be called activism by those of us drawn to a life afloat. Instead, we should recognize it as our job to protect the places we hold dear, in the hope that the coming generation may inherit the same sense of awe and wonder we feel every time we spin that tabletop globe.

Laura Belichak grew up sailing and surfing in Northern California, and after high school moved part time with her family aboard their Catalina 400, Circe, to spend the next four years cruising the Sea of Cortez. She is in the process of preparing her own boat, a Cal 2-27 named Wild, for her own extending sailing adventure. You can follow her at ­ livingthewildway.com.

The post A Green Guide for the Sea of Cortez appeared first on Cruising World.

This year we sailed from the Mediterranean to the Canary Islands, down the West African coast to Cabo Verde, then right across the Atlantic Ocean to the Caribbean—over 4,000 nautical miles, and while underway, not once did we run our engine or generator for power or propulsion. For a whole month of sailing, we were driven entirely by the wind, sun and sea.

Compliments of Mother Nature, our B&G autopilot, sailing instruments, chart plotter, VHF, AIS, satellite phone, fridge/freezer compressor, lights and entertainment all ran on clean, natural, renewable energy. We even operated our Spectra Ventura 12-volt watermaker every three to five days when the sun was high, and had enough juice to run our Mastervolt inverter to charge our electric toothbrushes. In fact, we regularly had more incoming power than we needed and frequently restrained the wind generator to manage our charge during the day.

We didn’t always have such a green wake or an abundance of amps. When my wife, Catherine, and I set off from New York in 2007, Dream Time, our 38-foot Cabo Rico, sported just an Ampair wind generator and one feeble flexible solar panel sagging over the Bimini. On a really good day, both would generate about 5 to 6 amps—just enough to keep the beer cold. We made it as far as Florida before realizing an upgrade to our renewable-­energy source was necessary. We replaced the single flexible solar panel with two 85-watt panels, the fore/aft angle of which can be adjusted to face the sun. A few years later, in New Zealand, we replaced our Ampair wind generator with a D400, and a few more sea miles after that, in the Northern Territory of Australia, we bought a secondhand hydrogenerator from a local sailor, rebuilt the unit and added it to our arsenal of passagemaking power.

Since our original upgrades, we’ve gone weeks at anchor in the tropics without having to burn fuel to charge our two 225-amp-hour gel house batteries. The solar panels provide 10 to 12 amps when the sun is high, while our D400 wind generator adds another 10 to 15 amps when the trades are steady. Combined, it’s more than enough to give us complete off-the-grid freedom to power our floating home, make water and run the inverter for a few hours every evening. But passagemaking was always a charging challenge because sail shadows would, at some point in the day, cover our solar panels, and as we spend most of our time going with the breeze rather than against it, the apparent wind speed for our D400 would drop by 30 percent.

Cruising catamarans typically have plenty of surface area and can comfortably carry 500 watts of solar panels, and even twin wind generators, one for each hull, without looking cluttered. But for a modest-size monohull where space is at a premium, unless you don’t mind your boat looking like an overloaded pack mule or having an engine thumping away in the hull a few hours a day just to boost your volts, finding balance between power consumption and renewable energy can be a little more challenging.

Our voyage across the Atlantic wasn’t our fastest —under mostly sunny skies, we averaged a respectable 6 knots, with 15 to 20 knots of wind blowing steadily across our stern—but it was the first offshore passage during which we’d been able to tow our Aquair hydrogenerator. The unit produced a little less than 1 amp for every knot of boatspeed, contributing up to 5 amps—faster speeds did not result in an increase of current and only had the unit’s prop whizzing and leaping from waves like a hooked mahi. Some cruisers attach anodes to the propeller shaft to increase its weight, but for Dream Time, this would rarely be necessary. The 100 feet of trailing line and propeller made no discernible difference to boatspeed, and like our wind generator, provided steady, reliable power 24 hours a day, allowing Dream Time to sail quietly through the night, with volts rarely falling below 12.6.

Since we left New York, we have sailed 48,000 nautical miles, and we have found a balance on Dream Time, one that we never imagined possible 13 years ago. Our independence and the security we feel that comes from our self-reliance are among the most valuable discoveries we have made on our long voyage around the world. There is an intimacy and awareness to the moment that comes when living on a small boat sailing far from the noise and distraction of a modern life. And there is a most satisfying freedom, a harmony that comes from crossing oceans, exploring the world under sail, powered entirely by the wind, sun and sea.

The post Sail Green Across the Atlantic appeared first on Cruising World.

Everyone knows there’s no such thing as a free boat. Just don’t tell Matt Rutherford, who can gaze from the deck of his latest one—which he hopes will take him to the ends of the earth—to the tarnished remains of his former one, which already did.

Pretty little St. Brendan lies these days on the hard, at the end of a gravel lane of old-timers that have seen better times and places. Eight years ago, in one of the great sea-voyaging triumphs of all time, Rutherford sailed the donated 27-foot, 40-year-old Albin Vega from Annapolis, Maryland, back to Annapolis—via the Northwest Passage and Cape Horn, some 27,000 nautical miles in 309 days, nonstop and singlehanded at an average rate of 3.5 knots (see “Fortitudine Vincimus,” July 2012).

Now St. Brendan, named for an Irish cleric who braved the uncharted North Atlantic in a leather curragh 1,500 years ago, sits on jack stands at Herrington Harbor North near Annapolis, waiting like a sleepy old dog at a shelter for a softhearted buyer who may never materialize. Rutherford can see her easily from the steel deck of his newest project, the massive sailing vessel Marie Tharp, which sits just two rows away and towers above everything. She’s so big, he had to buy a 20-foot extension ladder just to get up the side.

The schooner is 72 feet long from bowsprit to massive, barn-door transom, custom-built of fine Dutch steel following lines drawn by heralded offshore-yacht designer Bruce Roberts. Fully outfitted for sea, she’ll weigh a staggering 115,000 pounds, more than 20 times the displacement of little St. Brendan.

The price for both was the same: zero. And, of course, both needed work, which is right up Rutherford’s alley.

I first met Rutherford in 2010, when he was rooting around Annapolis looking for help on a most unpromising project. He’d been working as a volunteer fixing up boats for Chesapeake Region Accessible Boating, a local nonprofit with a clever acronym—CRAB— whose mission is to get disabled folks out sailing for recreation. He and the group’s founder, Don Backe, who had lost use of his legs in a car crash, hatched the idea of Rutherford taking a donated CRAB boat “around the Americas” to raise money for and awareness of the group’s mission. The aged Vega was wasting away in a boatyard then, but Rutherford saw in it the makings of an adventure he’d long wanted to tackle.

“I went down in the cabin and lay down on the bunk one day, and it fit me. I thought, This can work!”

He spent months ­dumpster-diving and cajoling bits of gear from local enablers, most of whom (including me) thought the whole idea was nuts. And he worked like a farmer, largely alone, installing bulkheads and a Samson post, redoing rigging, fitting sails and cramming the little craft with freeze-dried food, an old bladder tank for diesel that completely covered the cabin floor, a hand-­operated watermaker, sea anchors, radios, navigation gear, boots and foulies.

When he left Annapolis heavily laden in June 2011, few thought we’d ever see the then-30-year-old or his little boat again. When he popped back up at City Dock the following April, having survived the most perilous marine obstacles on Earth, the governor and local sailing celebrity Gary Jobson were there to greet him, along with hundreds more. He was a penniless hero, having left with $30 and come back with the same thin, soggy wallet.

Rutherford, who grew up rough and rowdy in the Rust Belt of Ohio, was used to being broke. But he leveraged his short, bright fame well, giving paid talks about his trip and making connections that helped him set up a nonprofit, the Ocean Research Project, dedicated to doing scientific research to save the aqueous two-thirds of the planet. He also found a fine partner, Nicole Trenholm, who is almost as fearless as him. Together they have gone to the ends of the earth, more than once.

Rutherford’s goal, ever since he graduated from an alternative high school for troubled kids at age 20, has been to roam the globe and do some good. He’s never had two nickels to rub together but figured out early that a sailboat costs nothing to operate as long as you stay away from land, and he’s grown adept at getting free or almost-free sailboats in which to do that.

His first was a Coronado 25 bought sight unseen for $2,000. When he went to claim it in a Maryland boatyard, “the weeds were higher than the boat.” He and an old Ohio girlfriend, knowing nothing about boats or the sea, patched it up, evicted the mud daubers, and made it to Key West before three straight hurricanes did the boat in. He acquired a succession of storm-damaged beaters after that, the last of which, a Pearson 323, took him solo across the Atlantic, down the West Africa coast, and back home.

He eventually fetched up on that boat, broke again, in Annapolis, where Backe and the Albin Vega awaited. Trenholm popped up shortly after Rutherford’s voyage around the Americas. He wowed her at a yacht-club talk he gave, and she wowed him when she said she was a budding scientist specializing in the marine environment—just what he needed to lend credibility to his nonprofit. She’s now a doctoral candidate in marine climate science at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, studying when she’s not off at sea with Rutherford.

They did most of their traveling on Ault, a 42-foot steel cat-ketch Rutherford bought with the gains from his voyage around the Americas and some borrowed cash from family. It was a rust-streaked wreck that needed 12 steel plates welded on by an unemployed motorcycle mechanic before it could be trusted to leave the bay.

You’d see Rutherford and Trenholm around town that summer, looking like a pair of Welsh coal miners fresh from the job site, in tattered rags streaked with dust and grease. It was hot, as always for the Chesapeake, and as damp as a jungle, but Trenholm gave as good as she got with sander, chipper and paintbrush, and after a shower, she still looked like a movie star—without the peroxide hair.

They took the refurbished Ault across the Atlantic and back, gathering plastic bits and pieces for an unpaid study on a suspected garbage gyre in a remote patch west of the Azores. Then they crossed the Pacific from California to Japan in a borrowed Harbor 29 doing the same thing, arriving days before a typhoon struck that would have sunk them and all their data forever.

Back home, they readied Ault, which cruises at 4 knots and “goes to weather like a well-trimmed refrigerator,” in Rutherford’s assessment, for two summers of research in the Arctic. They charted the bottom in uninhabited Greenland fjords well above the 70th parallel north, and studied currents and temperature variations for NASA. They found evidence of a mysterious, deep warm-water current that’s eating away at glaciers from below. For the second of those missions, having proved their worth, they actually got paid, though barely enough to cover costs.

Scientists believe climate- change research is crucial in the high latitudes, where the effects of man’s addiction to fossil fuels is felt most severely, and Rutherford and Trenholm came back from the Arctic convinced there’s a niche for small, efficient and inexpensive platforms like Ault, and now Marie Tharp, to do that kind of work.

Most Arctic research falls to big, powerful research vessels that carry teams of scientists in comfort and style. Trenholm took part in one last summer, working for three-and-a-half weeks on a chartered Swedish icebreaker that had every convenience, including a sauna and a pingpong table. “We dressed for dinner. It was like a vacation,” she says.

But all that luxury comes at a price. “I was on a $6 million expedition,” Trenholm says, “and it showed me how much more Matt and I are capable of doing at a fraction of the cost.”

Rutherford reckons that the average cost of a big research vessel working in the Arctic is about $25,000 a day. “We can operate for one-tenth that,” he says, “and because the new scientific equipment is smaller and less power-hungry, we can do anything they can do.”

If small is good, Ault was unfortunately a bit too small. While their two summers in the Arctic were fruitful, the little steel boat was big enough only for Rutherford, Trenholm, and a deckhand or two. Rutherford was ruminating one day on his podcast, Singlehanded Sailing, about how much better they could do with a bigger boat, and his thoughts wandered to a vision of a steel Bruce Roberts 65-footer—a design he considered perfect for the job: big enough for a scientific team of four to stay in relative comfort, with berths for himself as captain and a crew of two or three, but still cheap to operate.

Amazingly, a random listener knew where just such a boat lay languishing and put them in touch with the owner, Zan Ricketson, a dreamer who’d spent 18 years building it up from bare hull and rig for a planned grand adventure in the high latitudes but was about ready to give up. The boat was in the water in Delaware.

“It was about 80 percent finished,” said Rutherford, who rushed up to the C&D Canal for a look-see and immediately began badgering Ricketson to donate it to the Ocean Research Project. The deal closed in 2018, and early the next spring, Rutherford got the freshly rebuilt, 212-horsepower Ford diesel fired up, and brought the boat south to Herrington Harbor, where she was hauled and blocked for a refit.

He named her Marie Tharp in honor of a hero of his and other seafarers. Tharp was a scientist in the 1950s who labored in relative obscurity creating three-dimensional images of the seafloor using data from sonar readings that had never been coordinated into a usable format. “She painstakingly took these numbers to create a map showing the ridges and valleys and contours of the seafloor, worldwide,” Rutherford says.

“Her boyfriend got most of the credit. She wasn’t even allowed on a boat in the beginning—they didn’t want women aboard.” Others in his position might have waited to name their flagship for some wealthy sponsor. But don’t even ask Matt Rutherford, champion of the downtrodden, to call his boat Amway Explorer or Jiffy Lube Jet. It just ain’t gonna happen.

About the boat: She’s impressive if you don’t get too close. Massive, of course, with a good 8 feet of freeboard above an expansive, long-keel bottom. It was built by venerated steel-boat builder Howdy Bailey in his yard near Norfolk, Virginia, from steel cut to order from the best quarter-inch-thick Dutch stock. Rust? Well, sure, there’s a bit if you start chipping away, but it all appears repairable with some skillful welding.

The deck is flush, with a big, enclosed center cockpit that Rutherford intends to fortify with more steel bracing and new, shatterproof windows. There are watertight steel bulkheads fore and aft, so smashing into an iceberg or two will not prove fatal. Two anchors are mounted in the bow, with 700 feet of chain led to lockers amidships to keep the weight out of the pointy end.

The shiny, 6-cylinder Ford diesel has just 85 hours since a full rebuild and lives in an airy engine room, alongside a Kubota 24-volt generator that has never been fired up and is capable of powering a watermaker in addition to making electricity. Fuel capacity is 800 gallons, cruising speed is 7.5 knots, and Rutherford expects he’ll burn 3.3 gallons an hour, giving the boat a 1,500-mile range under power. The engine ran well on the 80-mile run from Delaware to the yard.

The rig is stout, with keel-stepped masts. Sails are brand- new, still in the original bags, and he expects to use them a lot. “When we get on-site, it will mostly be motoring as we collect data, but as long as there’s wind, we intend to sail the boat whenever we’re in open water,” Rutherford says.

Inside is a mess, to be blunt. A lot of work has been started, but little is finished. There’s a forecastle big enough for four bunks for crew, a nice head with separate shower just aft of that, a galley amidships on the starboard side (with no cooking equipment installed), a big saloon aft of the main mast, and two cabins beyond that: one for the captain’s quarters and another for a scientific crew of up to four. Forward of the saloon, on the opposite side of the boat from the galley, is a work chamber for scientific equipment.

Everywhere you look, plywood and framing lumber, batteries, tools and gadgets are strewn about. It looks like a third-grade schoolroom if the teacher disappeared for a month or two.

Rutherford reckons it will cost about $100,000 to finish up everything needed. At the end of the day, he’ll have a seaworthy, spartan platform to conduct Arctic research in, but there are no plans for saunas or pingpong rooms. His hope is that the spirit of adventure and the chance to conduct important research at a fraction of the usual cost will lure scientists who are serious about tackling the perils of climate change.

He and Trenholm are passionate about the mission. They believe that understanding climate change in the Arctic is crucial to ­understanding this global phenomenon in its infancy. “We published a pretty important study on the way warm-­water intrusion is eating the glaciers from the bottom up,” Rutherford says. “The next step is to tie warming water and glacial melting to changes in plankton growth, which is the basis of the food chain.”

As for the $100,000 or so they’ll need to get the job done, they’re on the prowl. Rutherford makes some money selling boats as a broker for Eastport Yacht Sales in Annapolis. He’s doing deliveries, having recently taken a big Beneteau across the pond to the Mediterranean. He had a deal this past winter to take paying riders along on voyages to and around the Caribbean on a borrowed boat. Trenholm’s applying for government grants. They’re interviewing potential sugar daddies. If you know any, pass the word via the Ocean Research Project website, or listen to a Singlehanded Sailing podcast for details (see “Help Launch the Dream,” below).

“It’s all about who you know,” Rutherford says. “And it’s not easy. They all say, ‘It’s great, awesome, a wonderful project—but not for us.’’’

If it were anyone but Matt Rutherford, I would probably say the same. We all thought he was off his meds when he was ricocheting around Annapolis nine years ago, muttering about a preposterous scheme to sail around the world the longitudinal way in a battered old North Sea weekender. And again when he shot out the Golden Gate in a borrowed club racer with his girlfriend, in a half-gale, bound for Yokohama.

We shook our heads and clucked our tongues when he left the Chesapeake in a steel tub with unstayed masts and a 30-year-old Perkins 4-108, bound for the Arctic at the pace of a kid’s tricycle. And then we applauded each time he came back, having accomplished what he’d set out to do. He’s got a track record.

The new project with Marie Tharp is daunting, with unfinished business everywhere you look: holes to patch, deckhouse to build, plumbing to finish, electronics to install, furniture to find, watermaker, beds, insulation, stove, fridge, sinks and headliners. Where to even begin?

Fortitudine Vincimus was the family credo of Ernest Shackleton, Rutherford’s idol, who brought his men safely home from the wreck of his flagship in the Antarctic a century ago, after luring them there by advertising: “Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of compete darkness. Constant Danger. Safe return doubtful.”

“By Endurance We Conquer” is the translation. Those are words to live by for a fellow who has seen the remotest corners of the world from the decks of boats nobody else wanted. “I guess it would have been nice to be born a rich kid,” Rutherford says. “But then I never would have done any of these things. I’d just be a lazy rich kid.”

Angus Phillips is a longtime Chesapeake Bay-based racing and cruising sailor, former outdoor columnist for The Washington Post, and frequent contributor to CW.

Help Launch The Dream

Matt Rutherford is and always has been a driven sailor, and has financed many of his adventures through yacht deliveries and contributions to his nonprofit dedicated to Arctic exploration and research. To learn more about Matt, and Nicole’s backgrounds, accomplishments and future endeavors, or to make a donation to the cause, visit his website.

The post Matt Rutherford’s Arctic Research Dreams appeared first on Cruising World.

Sailing legend holds that the celebrated yacht designer L. Francis Herreshoff commonly referred to fiberglass as “frozen snot,” a rather pejorative term for one of the easiest and most cost-effective materials afloat for building sailboats. Trouble arises, however, when it’s time to permanently unbend a boat’s sails, since well-crafted fiber and resin lasts virtually forever and is notoriously hard to recycle. As a result, many tired old boats end up as landfill fodder.

In fact, the Rhode Island Marine Trades Association (RIMTA) estimates that some 1.5 million fiberglass boats were ­retired in the U.S. between 2003 and 2012, and that’s saying nothing of the eye-watering toll that’s been extracted by ­recent hurricane activity in weather-battered states like Florida and the Carolinas. Fortunately, RIMTA and Rhode Island Sea Grant created the Rhode Island Fiberglass Vessel Recycling Pilot Project to explore ways of sustainably deconstructing glass-reinforced-plastic hulls and recycling the fiberglass into cement.

The pilot project is currently working with local Rhode Island boatyards to recycle 20 to 30 metric tons of fiberglass, while also partnering with various agencies to create a physical process that meets all local, state and federal health and safety requirements.

This ­recycled material will be tested in a specialized cement kiln later this year. Additionally, the RIFVR Pilot Project is conducting a cost-­benefit analysis, researching any legislation and regulations that could be ­implemented to support ­fiberglass-recycling programs, and carefully ­documenting the process.

“We are continuing to answer critical questions surrounding the life cycle of recreational boats and the sustainable ­reuse of fiberglass waste,” said Evan Ridley, the program’s project manager. “Boats constructed with composite materials offer an incredible opportunity for our state to establish a new network for the collection and recycling of high-value waste derived from thousands of other composite-based products currently being landfilled.”

While it’s important to note that the RIFVR Pilot Project is just taking its nascent steps, if things go well, the project could eventually be rolled out regionally and nationally.

Likewise, a project that starts with recreational boats could potentially evolve into a sustainable methodology for recycling all manner of frozen snot.

The post Green Wakes: Fiberglass Boat Recycling appeared first on Cruising World.

Zero waste has become not only a buzz phrase but a global ­movement. Although the term “zero waste” implies a drastic lifestyle, the main purpose is to raise awareness about how much waste is created in our day-to-day lives. With most cruising boats lacking a place to keep bags of trash, and many of the remote places we visit lacking the infrastructure to handle much trash, reducing waste is a win for everyone.

Joining the zero-waste movement might seem overwhelming at first, but it doesn’t have to be. Instead of making many changes at once, pick one or two things you’d like to work on and go from there.

ON BOARD

Swap out disposable for reusable: Paper towels, dish sponges, plastic wrap and paper plates are just a few of the items on board that can be easily switched from disposable items to reusable.

Go au naturel: When considering clothing or cleaning cloths, choose natural fabrics like cotton, linen, hemp and bamboo, which can biodegrade, over man-made polyesters and microfibers.

Use what you have: A great way to start reducing food waste is simply to use what you have on board before re-­provisioning. Sometimes it means getting a little creative in the galley, but that can be a good thing too.

Upcycle items: Before spending big on fancy storage containers try reusing things like glass peanut-butter jars, coffee cans and plastic ice-cream tubs.

Make your own: From preserves to toothpaste, clothing to cleaning supplies, the internet is overflowing with DIY ­projects that will help you on your zero-waste journey.

ASHORE

Refuse single-use plastics: Straws, plastic bags, water bottles, takeout ­containers and utensils are the big culprits. Simply by packing your own reusable shopping bags and saying no to straws, you can drastically reduce your trash. If you’re getting takeout, bring your own container and utensils. And don’t forget your reusable water bottle and coffee cup.

Buy local: Supporting local makers and growers is an easy way to shop ­sustainably. These small businesses often use less packaging and preservatives. Buying local cuts down on transporting goods, reducing their carbon footprint.

Shop secondhand: Books, ­electronics, clothes, galley equipment and even big-ticket boat gear can all be sourced secondhand. Check out your local swap meet, charity shop or online forums like Craigslist and eBay.

Go green: Look for plant-based, ­biodegradable detergents, soaps and cleaning products that are free of parabens, phosphates, phthalates, harsh chemicals, dyes and fragrances.

Skip it: Many items are impulse buys. Before making a purchase, ask yourself if you have something that already does the job.

The post Green Wakes: 10 Ways to Reduce Waste Aboard 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.

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

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