Are we sailing

[Alanhod]

[EmergencyExit]

Good thoughts Alan. And it is all relative. Maintaining an older boat is greener than buying a new one since fiberglass is a chemical process and a new boat will add to the problem. But we are not green as the old school craft made from wood !! So is sailing my chemical (yes petro is involved in making resins at the plant) wind powered sailboat greener than the power guy with the wooden Chris Craft ?

Cars ? I'd just love that little Tesla for my commute, its so much greener than my petromobile..or is it ? All the lithium in all those little LiOn power cells didn't just appear from thin air. Mining, shipping, processing, manufacturing. Another problem to dispose of down the road.


Oh, well. Off now to work on my wind powered green friendly sailboat. Soon as I make the 50 mile trip which involves crossing the Father of Waters on a fire breathing, smoke belching canoe with 35 fire breathing fume blowing cars on it. And passing the coal power plant which will be needed to drive my power tools at the boat.

At least my home power comes from the nuke plant near the coal plant. It's a lot greener to work on my boat at home. Except for the problem of storing all that leftover nukey stuff in the desert for a thousand years.


I need to buy a blowup raft I guess. Wait, that's petro based plastic, too. And I'll exhale Co2 when I blow it up.

Alan, I give up. My head hurts.

[CaptainScott]

Destiny is green.





Scott

[fuseitinthesun]

Funny, my friends and I had this same conversation on sunday as we were being thrown around Lake Michigan on my LS-13. Is sailing cost effective? Is it green? Had to tow it from Lansing, though I would have made that trip whether or not I brought the boat. But, increased drag on the highway no doubt meant more gas. The boat was free, rescued from decaying beside someone's pole barn, and I put around $300 into getting it (kind of) seaworthy. It badly needs a new mainsail, but we just endure the embarrassment of looking like Haitian refugees amongst all the gleaming white yachts. I don't even have a motor on it, which means when we screw up we go swimming with a rope!

I feel like it's about as green as it gets - as long as I don't catch the fever of always needing to have bigger and better stuff. As was wisely pointed out, everything (even new, 'greener' technologies) have their raw materials mined or cut, and take energy to manufacture and especially to transport. Of course I want that stuff, but I can't afford it - and even with all the jury-rigged stuff on my boat, we still felt like we were really zipping around out there, and taking lots of fun spray over the bow. The best thing of all, I think, is that I've already gotten way more than my $300 back in enjoyment from it. So if I get too brave and foolish and have to ditch it for safety, or it gets stolen (it's not locked up or anything), I can walk away clean knowing that very little was ventured and so much was gained. And if it sinks to the bottom? Well, most of the chemicals leeched out of it 30 years ago.

So the moral for me is, we should all try to get a little less caught up in pimping our boats and worshiping them as possessions, and spend a little (or a lot) more time actually out sailing them. You'll never get what you paid for if you have to spend all your time working and saving for that next upgrade! When something breaks, fix it. Otherwise, try to be happy with what you have!

[CaptainScott]

we should all try to get a little less caught up in pimping our boats and worshiping them as possessions, and spend a little (or a lot) more time actually out sailing them.

The quote of all quotes! This is how I like to live my life!!
Less work, more play! I suspect Alan will agree to that after meeting me! LOL!


Scott

[Mario G]

The energy to build one new boat is more then what any of us will use of failing our old Chryslers for as long as they last.

I know its true about cars,

One thing I really enjoy telling people is my sailing only cost gas there and gas back and because I use about 3 gal of gas a normal week the little extra to the coast is no biggie. We never use an outboard on the C-22 and little as posible on the C-26

[LeatherneckPA]

We never use an outboard on the C-22 and little as posible on the C-26

So what do you do when there is NO wind, as happened to us our first time out. Plenty of wind to get us out to the middle of the lake in about 10 mins, then tiny little zephyrs that eventually got us back to the dock after about an hour and a half.

I'd like to weigh in on the side of being green, even if I weren't a 350 lb Irishman. The original dream of sailing, in my case, was seized upon as a low-cost, fuel-efficient means to travel to all the distant places I read of that intrigued me. Air fare would simply have been too prohibitive.

[Mario G]

the last 2 times out we had no wind to come in. I find the C-22 isn't hard to paddle but we also had a number of tow offers and hey if I can't get back on time how can you say anything when I can blame it on the wind.

Its always windy at the coast

[kokezaru]

I figure that I am more "green" when I am out sailing, than when I am on my computer reading this forum! (and I don't mean seasick)

[Capt. Bondo]

Good thoughts my friends.
Being Green is relative to what you beleave, and the values you have.
Humans have the problem of viewing everything in the short term, a generation or two.
If you realy think about it, all the earth's resources are renewable with time. Our problem is that we are burning through the earths current resources faster than the earth can renew them.
In 50,000 years who knows what fabulous resource our landfills and cities will become, long after mother mature replaces us with the next species to inhabit the earth.

So enjoy your life now, by the values that you beleave are true.
GO SAILING, enjoy the earth as sailers do.