The New Age of Sail
Dmitry Orlov
A sailboat is not the first thing that comes to mind
when contemplating the range of useful responses to the set of
intractable global problems that confront us. Nor the second. But once
it does, a bit of further study makes it apparent that few things will
possess greater long-term utility in the changed circumstances we
should all be expecting. And it takes just one more leap of imagination
to realize that it makes sense to pursue this long-term utility, rather
than continuing to think of temporary measures and half-measures, while
being mesmerized into paralysis by the unfolding deterioration of the
status quo, in thrall to questions of political strategy and process.
And so, let us purge our minds of
the inane buzz-words of today, such as "energy security" or "energy
independence" and "green" this or that. ("It's easy to be green!" says
Kermit the frog in an SUV commercial; I would beg to differ, but then
who am I to disagree with a hand-puppet?) Let us drop the conceit that
these are "problems," and that they can be "fixed." Let us instead try
an experiment: let us dissociate from human history, and free-associate
our way into the next chapter of natural history, which, let us bravely
assume, a member of our ecologically challenged species will still be
on hand to narrate.
When in 1722 a European ship first anchored off Easter
Island, the surviving islanders paddled out to it in their canoes,
which the Europeans described as fragile, made of many small sticks
ingeniously fastened together, not at all seaworthy, and entirely
unlike the large ocean-going canoes that had carried the ancestors of
these Polynesian settlers to the island across the vastness of the
Pacific around 1200 AD. The islanders wanted to trade with the
Europeans, and timber was high on the list of items sought by
islanders. By that time, few trees still grew on Easter Island. It had
once been heavily forested with palm trees, but was by then denuded,
the palm nuts having been gnawed by rats, which were introduced by the
settlers. The islanders survived this environmental calamity, shifting
to grasses for making fire, and their population remained stable until
the arrival of the Europeans. But they found themselves marooned. They
had lost their boatbuilding and seafaring skills; moreover, they lacked
a key boat-building material: large, old-growth trees. With no means of
escape, they were easy prey for the conquering Europeans; thousands of
them were enslaved and carried off; many others remained and died of
disease. They should have built some boats, while they still could, and
kept their options open.
Small islands such as Easter Island, the sudden
collapses that befall their fragile ecosystems, and the subsequent
cataclysms experienced by their populations, are considered to be
objects worthy of study, because in microcosm they represent many of
the same problems that are now besetting the planet as a whole. We live
at a time when even the most concerted attempts at cultivating an
optimistic outlook fail in the face of front-page news about
catastrophic climate change, impending energy shortages, military
quagmires and fiascos, and degradation of land and water resources, all
of which are putting an ever-greater strain on a global population,
whose precipitous decline will perhaps be no less spectacular than its
recent exponential increase. The economic services on which we depend
are in turn based entirely on ecological services, whether from living
ecosystems, or from the remains of fossilized ones.
By most accounts, it is a certainty that at some point
during the present century oil and natural gas will no longer be
produced in significant quantities anywhere in the world. Attempts to
replace these sources of energy with other, dirtier sources, such as
tar sand, shale oil, uranium, coal, wood, dried sea squirrels
(biomass), or anything else that will burn, will only accelerate the
pace of environmental devastation and climate disruption. It is
proceeding apace in any case, drawing the curtain on the last ten
thousand years of unusually stable climate, which allowed agriculture
to flourish and human populations to mushroom. In light of these
developments, it seems implausible that the technological civilization
which currently constitutes our communal life support system will hold
together.
Perhaps we should be making some new plans, like the
Easter islanders should have done, while there is still time. But there
is hardly anything more enduring in the world than human folly, and
there is no-one to steer this ship of fools away from the rocks of
physical reality. Even if there was, this ship is not designed to turn,
or even to slow down, but only to speed up. What other word is there
for people who are working harder and harder in order to bequeath to
their children a bankrupt country and a planet-sized disaster area –
except fools? Some suppose it it our insect-like genetic programming to
postpone desperate measures until it is too late for them to be of any
use. I doubt that it is: we were free spirits once, before a millennium
or two of settled, civilized labor of tending fields and serving a
landlord (or serving as a landlord) bred it out of us.
It is our luck as a species that the foregoing applies
to most of us, but not to all of us. Some far-sighted and courageous
souls, whose initiative has not been entirely crushed by the forces of
civilization, are taking their first, tentative steps in a direction
away from certain disaster. They are making conscious choices that
reduce their dependence on fossil fuels and on technologies that rely
on them. They are attempting to form close-knit communities, and strive
for self-sufficiency. Some of them are starting to construct their own
shelter, grow their own food, educate their own children, and provide
their own entertainment. These are all very sensible measures, and I
applaud the people who are trying to make them work.
In fact, I am one of them. I live in a place that is
cheap to heat and cool. A few years ago, I sold my car, and I am now a
year-round bicyclist. I limit myself to one airline trip a year. I have
even made some tentative steps in the direction of growing my own food
(more peas, anyone?). Some might say that by taking these steps, I have
improved my inclusive fitness. Others might observe that I have only
increased my exclusive smugness. Suits me either way, but really all I
have done is take a few steps in the right direction, one step at a
time, because I could. So can you. It's simple.
Such steps, followed to their logical conclusion, are
sometimes grouped under terms such as powerdown, relocalization, and
ecovillages. These approaches will probably be viable in some areas,
but not others. None of them addresses an important question: What
are we to do about all the many places that will no longer have the
carrying capacity to sustain a permanent settlement of any size?
We should expect this to be the norm, not the exception: before the
recent ten-thousand-year period of predictable weather, agriculture was
not reliable enough, and people had to remain on the move, leading a
migratory or nomadic existence, surviving through hunting and gathering
food over a wide area. Given an environment characterized by droughts,
floods, a long and violent hurricane season, coastal inundations due to
rising sea levels, soils depleted by a century of mechanized
agriculture, and forest ecosystems undermined by the northward spread
of diseases and pests, is it not perfectly conceivable that the
migratory, nomadic lifestyle will once again become for the majority of
us the only survivable option?
In a climate where the tropics are only survivable
during the winter, and the temperate regions only during the summer, we
would still stand a chance if we establish a lifestyle where we chase
good weather by wandering back and forth between the two, and practice
Permaculture by establishing edible forest gardens and gathering food
as we travel up and down the coasts and inland waterways. If we
establish this lifestyle before we are crippled by the onset of
permanent crisis, while bold experiments are still possible, we would
stand a chance. And if we pass this lifestyle on to our children, they
would stand a chance as well.
This brings us full circle back to the hapless Easter
islanders with their leaky canoes made of small sticks: we will
certainly need better boats than that. Because a nomadic life does not
have to be particularly hard or dangerous – provided you can take your
home with you wherever you go. As a practical matter, this means that
your house has to be a sailboat, and as any one of a whole tribe of
live-aboard cruising sailors will attest, in some ways this is an
arrangement that is superior to the settled existence of a landlubber.
Since, prior to the onset of reliable weather, we were nomads, we can
revert, and once we do so, the enslavements of settled life will
probably start to seem like an odd bargain. I can testify that I have
improved my life dramatically by becoming car-free. Might I improve it
yet further by becoming house-free as well?
Let us imagine what that would look like. Being
something of Pollyanna, I will assume a rosy business-as-usual
scenario. Given the abject failure of political initiatives such as the
Kyoto Protocol, as well as of our contemporary environmental movement,
not only to arrest and reverse, not even to slow down, but even to
reduce the acceleration of our headlong plunge toward environmental
oblivion, this seems like a reasonable assumption.
Perhaps you are a fan of Al Gore, who in his recent book and movie, An Inconvenient Truth,
draws a rather facile comparison between the problem of curbing CFC
production to preserve the ozone layer, and the problem of stopping
global warming. Beware of Al Gore's siren song: "The system is good,
the system works, work within the system." The system was good for Al –
it made him Vice President, and a lifelong member of that club. The
goodness of his system, plus a winning lottery ticket, would be good
for you too. For the rest of us, business-as-usual is not helpful, nor
are people like Al who try to talk it up. But if we assume that they
are rich enough and powerful enough to get their way, keeping us sold
on "clean coal," hybrids, and hydrogen dreams of their corporate
techno-fix utopia, and politely excluding us when we refuse to do their
bidding, our future may very well end up looking as follows.
A few decades from now, just off the coast...
It is nearing sunset when the vegan ship sights land.
There are two vegans on deck; two more are roused from their hammocks
below the deck to help with the landing. They lower and furl the sails,
take down and secure the masts, then row and scull the boat through the
surf. When she finally noses up onto the beach, they jump down into the
water and wade ashore hauling lines, then labor mightily to get her up
onto level ground, panting in the stuffy air. They thrust pieces of
driftwood under the bow, tie lines around trees and rocks, and roll the
boat out of the water and well away from it. To lighten the load, they
drain the ballast tanks that kept the boat upright and stable while it
was underway. Once the boat is high and dry, and sitting upright on
level ground like a giant piece of furniture, they unload their cargo
of dried sea squirrel. Finally, they post a watch, and the other three
retreat below, stretch out in their hammocks, and rock themselves to
sleep, for once without any assistance from the sea.
Sea squirrels are pale, sickly-looking, and, above all,
sad. Dried ones doubly so. They are endowed with flabby bags for a
body, some ineffectual spiny tendrils, and dangling dark bits of
uncertain purpose. One might conjecture that they are mutant shellfish
that survived having their shells dissolved by the carbonic acid in the
seawater. Being vegans, the vegans would never think of eating one; nor
anything else that washes up on the shores of that brownish, carbonated
ocean, almost lifeless after that final, desperate binge of
coal-burning that occurred just as oil and gas were running out.
Picking dead sea squirrels off the beach with a pointed stick is an
unpleasant chore, making it useful for teaching children the subtle
difference between work and play. Sea squirrels have but two charms:
they are at times plentiful, and, dried into flat chips, they burn with
a clean, yellow flame – not bad for illumination, and convenient for
cooking the food which the vegans both plant and harvest all along the
shore.
The Vegans' passion is for spreading seeds and gathering
and consuming the proceeds. They are on an indefinite mission to boldly
grow food where no one grew it before. They are carried forth by their
ship, which looks like a long box sharpened into a wedge on one end,
but is capable of a full warp four knots to windward, and double that
in anything more favorable. Their mission is of an indefinite duration
because their home port is under several feet of water, and although
that water came from pristine, ancient glaciers and icecaps, it is now
briny and laced with toxins. And although their grandparents never tire
of telling them how at one time their home port had not one, but
several excellent vegan restaurants, now there is hardly anything there
that a vegan would want to eat, and hardly anyone to eat it with.
The vegans abstain from eating animal flesh not because
of their tastes or their sense of ethics, but because most animal flesh
has become toxic. The increased mining and burning of coal, tar sands,
shale, and other dirty fuels, dust storms blowing in from desertified
continental interiors, and the burning and degradation of plastic
trash, have released into the biosphere so much arsenic, cadmium, lead,
mercury, dioxins, and numerous other toxins, that the vast majority of
predatory species, non-vegan humans among them, have become extinct.
Since toxin concentrations increase as they travel up the food chain,
certain top predators, such as belugas and orcas, went first, followed
by most non-vegetarian animals. Along with chemical toxins, the
biosphere became inundated with long-lived radionucleotides from
derelict nuclear installations left over from the hasty attempts to
ramp up nuclear power generation. Those built near the coasts are still
bubbling away underwater due to rising ocean levels. And so the only
surviving humans are those clever enough to realize that only the
plants remain edible.
Although the vegans rarely want for food, this is only
because of their Permaculture skills, because growing food has become
an uncertain proposition. Droughts and wildfires alternate with
torrential rains that wash away the topsoil, the ocean keeps spreading
further and further inland, and in better years insects sometimes stage
a revival and devastate much of what the vegans have planted. Were they
to settle in any one place, they would certainly starve before too
long. But because they have boats, and because climate upheaval is
constant but uneven, they can be sure that something of what they have
planted is growing and bearing fruit somewhere. It is solely by virtue
of being migratory, and, over the years, nomadic, that they are able to
persist from one generation to the next. They carry what they gather
with them, and, carefully conserving the seed stock and constantly
experimenting with it, manage to renew it. When a period of devastation
runs its course, they step in and plant a new forest garden ecosystem.
When they revisit it, after a few weeks or a few years, it may be dead,
or overgrown with weeds, or it may be thriving, and yield a harvest of
wood, nuts, berries, fruits, tubers, and herbs. And, of course, seeds.
The shore is for gathering food, for hauling out, making
repairs, and for congregating. For everything else, there are the
boats. They provide shelter, transportation, and a place to store food
and other supplies. They carry all the tools needed to repair them, and
even to reproduce them. They provide fresh water for drinking and
washing, by capturing the rainwater that falls on their decks: one good
torrential downpour is enough to fill their freshwater tanks, which
hold several months' supply. They provide escape from wild weather,
being fast enough to outsail it. In open ocean, away from flying and
floating debris, they dutifully pound their way up and down towering
waves, rattling the bones of the crew hiding in the enclosed cockpit
and below the deck, but remaining impervious to either wind or water.
It is little wonder, then, that boatbuilding and seafaring skills are
at the top of the vegan home schooling curriculum: they are what keeps
them afloat.
In November 2004, a survey published in the London Times
chose the bicycle as the country's greatest invention of the past 250
years, surpassing electricity and vaccination. The early history of the
modern safety bicycle is somewhat marred by the atrocities committed by
Europeans to secure a supply of rubber for tires and inner tubes.
Dunlop patented the rubber bicycle tire in 1888. A mere three years
later Belgium's king Leopold II decreed that residents of the Congo
must either supply the needed rubber, or have their children murdered
and their hands cut off. The Palais de Laeken, built with the proceeds,
is disfiguring Brussels to this day.
The bicycle may be the best thing the British have given
to the world, but to my mind, humankind's greatest invention overall,
so far, is the sailboat. The last significant conceptual breakthrough
in the area of sailing technology arrived some two thousand years ago,
when Arab sailors in the Mediterranean invented the Lateen rig, which,
unlike all earlier sails, has the ability to pull a vessel toward the
wind, allowing it to sail in any direction. The Lateen rig consists of
a triangular, flat piece of sailcloth stretched between two straight
sticks. When the wind fills it, it forms a conic section – an efficient
airfoil that generates lift. The Chinese Junk rig is perhaps two
centuries younger, and works on a similar principle.
Around the 1300s, it finally dawned on the Europeans
that they might want to do something similar, and giant naval empires
were the result. So powerful was this innovation that it allowed the
vast majority of the world's islands and coastlines to be colonized
using vessels that were almost exclusively wind-powered. Once explored,
conquered, and exploited, far-flung colonies communicated and traded
with home ports using more sailing vessels. Sailing ships gradually
grew in size and improved in speed, so that by the end of the age of
sail, a small crew could move many tons of cargo over large distances
with wind power alone, the sole energy inputs being those embodied in
the ship itself, and those needed to house and feed the crew. This
level of energy efficiency in transportation has never been exceeded.
With the increased mining of coal and expanded steel
production, sail was supplanted by steam. The last European country to
carry freight by sail was Finland, whose sailing merchant fleet
continued to carry cargo up until World War II. The steamships' one
significant advantage over sailing ships was in their predictable
schedules, because they did not depend on the winds to make steady
progress on an arbitrary course. Steam engines were supplanted by
diesel and, for smaller craft, gasoline-powered ones, until at present
time only a small percentage of vessels is built to carry sail, and a
vanishingly small percentage of overall displacement. Moreover, all of
the larger sailboats are built with an auxiliary motor, and spend quite
a lot of time motoring rather than sailing.
It must be recognized that this state of affairs is
temporary. Coal, oil, and gas are part of a one-time bounty of
convenient, concentrated energy, which is being expended quite rapidly.
Over half of the stuff has been used up already, and the second half is
much poorer in quality, and is being used up at a much faster rate than
the first. The current trend toward ever-higher energy prices will be
followed by chronic energy shortages. Over the next several decades,
the majority of our oil-based machines will stop moving, boats and
ships among them.
In the interest of conserving energy, let us not waste
any more of it discussing the tedious subject of fossil fuel depletion.
There are people more expert than I who can explain, over and over
again if necessary, how existing reserves and new discoveries are
woefully inadequate to maintain current production levels, and how
energy is not the result of technological innovation, the free market
system, or wishing upon a star. They will also tell you how far along
we are along the depletion curve; the optimists among them will even
claim that there is nothing to worry about, because we have two or
three decades of production left at the current level. It is to be
expected that we will run out of fossil fuels before we run out of
optimists, who are, along with fools and madmen, a renewable resource.
Once energy reserves are exhausted, all that remains are
energy flows, all of which, with the exception of atomic decay,
originate from sunlight. Technologies do exist to exploit these flows:
windmills, waterwheels, forestry, and agriculture have been used for
centuries to tap into these flows, and will be again. However, all of
these energy flows put together will amount to only a small percentage
of the fossil fuel energy we are accustomed to using today.
Furthermore, there will be no question of using these renewable sources
of energy in the same way we are currently accustomed to using fossil
fuels: we will want to eat the corn, not burn it in stoves or engines.
Windmills will be used to pump water, not illuminate parking lots.
Waterwheels will be used to mill grain, and saw lumber, not heat
dwellings. The word "fuel" will be largely forgotten, replaced in
everyday speech by the words "firewood" and "fodder." Our boats will
once again have to move by wind power, or muscle power.
Water-based transportation is just about the only form
of transportation other than the bicycle that requires little or no
roadway maintenance. There are no surfaces to grade and pave, no tracks
to true, no bridges or trestles to maintain. Canals need to be dredged
periodically; navigation channels need to be marked with buoys; locks
and lighthouses need to be manned and maintained. But unlike motorway
or railroad maintenance, these activities do not require a large
industrial base, and are far less energy-intensive than any of the
alternatives. The 363-mile-long Erie Canal system, which links the
Atlantic Ocean with the Great Lakes, and has been operational since
1825, was built using manual labor, and can be maintained the same way.
The cost of maintaining it is tiny compared to the cost of maintaining
363 miles of highway. It and other artificial and natural waterways in
the United States and Canada comprise the greatest set of
transportation assets on the North American continent, and will regain
their status as vital lifelines once the railroads and the highways
have disappeared or reverted to dirt footpaths.
Nor is an industrial infrastructure required for the
construction and maintenance of the boats themselves. The key
ingredients can all be found in nature. The hull can be constructed out
of timbers and planks, sawed or split from fir, pine, or cedar logs,
and sealed with pitch from wood tar. Sails can be made of flax canvas
or bamboo matting, and rope can be spun from hemp. Of the man-made
materials that are needed, all are preindustrial: forged iron hand
tools for working the wood, and some amount of bronze for fasteners,
blocks, cleats, latches, hinges, and other hardware, which can be cast
using bronze age technology. A cast iron anchor and a wrought iron
anchor chain are helpful as well.
For anyone faced with an unpredictable future, but one
guaranteed to be disrupted and resource-poor, and to require frequent
relocation in search of scarce remaining resources, a sailboat designed
for the job would be a remarkable asset. It can provide not only
transportation, but housing and storage. It is a residence that does
not require one to own land. It can serve as a floating workshop,
kitchen, or clinic. It can help one flee from danger. It can make it
possible to live on land that is prone to floods. It can be maintained
with the help of basic skills, such as carpentry, spinning, and
weaving, using materials available within the environment. It can carry
all the tools needed to repair it or even reproduce it. In short, it is
difficult to think of anything that would be more useful to have.
None of the sailboats currently in commercial production
will do at all. Since the end of the age of sail, sailing has been
relegated to a number of niches, none of them of much practical value.
Overall, they have become a luxury item. An important element of this
luxury is the freedom from the buzz or throb of the engine, the stench
of fuel, and the noxious fumes of the exhaust plume: freedom to enjoy
nature without assaulting it. An early application of steam power was
in powering sailboats out of doldrums, but steam sailboats were quickly
supplanted by steamboats that did not carry sail. A similar fate awaits
the many modern sailboats that are designed to rely on their diesel or
gasoline auxiliaries, but for the exact opposite reason: they will be
trapped in the permanent doldrums of fuel scarcity.
The particular applications still reserved for sail
include recreation, sport, and historical preservation, with dollops of
luxury thrown in for each one. Recreational vessels range from small
sailing canoes and dinghies to daysailers and small coastal cruisers.
Sport encompasses a wide variety of racing boats, which are designed
for speed, especially speed to windward. Historical preservation
includes various old sloops and schooners, as well as newer boats
constructed entirely of wood by master craftsmen. The realm of pure
luxury gives us an assortment of cabin cruisers, which often have
plenty of teak and mahogany paneling and trim, fancy navigational
electronics, on demand hot water, and a sound system. Although they are
capable of crossing oceans, they are mainly used for ostentation, to
motor around the harbor, and to throw dockside parties.
Most contemporary sailboats make extensive use of modern
synthetic materials, composites, and advanced metallurgy. Most of the
hulls are made of fiberglass and epoxy composites, although some are
welded together out of steel or aluminum, some are made of ferrocement
(cement over steel mesh), and a few designs use fiberglass and epoxy
over plywood. The choice of material influences the design: fiberglass
is strongest when the vessel is egg-shaped, and thus we have a lot of
hulls that are rounded below the waterline, while steel hulls have to
be built up of flat rolled sheets, and consist of a series of panels
joined together along horizontal ridges known as chines.
Epoxy resins, which hold together the layers of
fiberglass cloth, are the end-products of a technological chain that
starts with crude oil. The petrochemical feedstocks used in epoxy resin
manufacturing are primarily propylene and benzene. The recent doubling
in oil prices has already started to put a squeeze on the profit
margins of epoxy resin manufacturers. Oil shortages will cause much of
the world's epoxy resin industry, currently around US$15 billion a
year, to scale back production and eventually to shut down. The
situation will be similar for wool fiberglass, of which fiberglass
cloth is made, and which requires a great deal of energy for melting
and spinning the glass. Thus, rising energy prices and ensuing
shortages will make the construction and even the maintenance of a
fiberglass hull an uncertain and expensive proposition.
The masts, booms, and other spars of a modern sailboat
are usually extruded out of aluminum alloys. Although bauxite, which is
the primary feedstock for aluminum manufacturing, is quite plentiful,
making it into aluminum requires a great deal of electricity. The
energy crisis of 2000-2001 in the Western United States has caused much
of the aluminum manufacturing in that region to shut down due to high
electricity prices. Rising energy prices and dwindling energy
availability will make aluminum spars very expensive and in ever
shorter supply. Similar relentless forces will impact the supply of
stainless steel cable, used for the standing rigging (forestays,
backstays, and shrouds).
Sails are made of Dacron (long-strand Polyester fiber),
Nylon, or Kevlar, which are all synthetics, and whose fate will be
similar to that of epoxy resin. Thus, sails will once again have to be
made of flax canvas. The other potential material for weaving sailcloth
is cotton, but cotton cultivation is no longer possible without the use
of chemical fertilizer, which is derived from natural gas, and
pesticides, insecticides, and fungicides, which are oil-based. About a
quarter of all insecticides used globally are lavished on cotton;
without them, the crop is destroyed by weevils. (Even with these
chemicals, the weevils seem to be winning the battle, evolving
resistance faster than new chemicals can be developed.) Thus, the
future availability of cotton is likely to be too low to make it a
useful source of sailcloth fiber. On the other hand, flax can be
cultivated without the use of fertilizers or pesticides, provided
proper crop rotation techniques are used.
Thus, most of the ingredients of a modern sailboat will
not be available in an energy-scarce, post-industrial environment.
Eventually, hulls will be once again made of wood timbers and planking,
and sealed with pitch. Spars will be made of wood, and rigged with hemp
line. But although it is highly unlikely that late this century anyone
will be able to construct a sailboat from fiberglass cloth, epoxy
resin, aluminum, stainless steel, and Dacron, the transition period is
likely to be uneven, with some materials available in limited
quantities, through small-scale manufacturing or salvage. Thus, it
seems premature to immediately shift to all post-industrial materials.
Instead, a practical sailboat design must be flexible with regard to
the choice of materials. The current materials of choice for
constructing a sailboat hull are either fiberglass or polyester cloth
and epoxy over Douglas fir marine plywood, fastened with bronze nails
or stainless steel screws. The same hull shape can be executed in
steam-bent quarter-sawn timbers and planking, caulked with hemp and
sealed with pitch, but this is only feasible if you own a large stand
of Douglas fir and have nothing but time. Sails can be made of Dacron
for as long as it is available, but of a shape that can be made from
the stretchier and weaker flax canvas, such as the Junk rig.
The path back to all-wood sailboat construction is
complicated by the increasing shortage of good quality wood. Houses are
now often built out of many small sticks screwed together, and sheathed
using oriented strand board, vinyl, and plasterboard. Furniture is now
mostly made of particleboard dressed up with faux-wood plastic veneer.
Wooden boats have to be built of more structurally sound materials,
such as boards cut radially from old growth logs. As old growth forests
are clear-cut and replanted, lumber of such quality is becoming
increasingly rare and very expensive. The new growth trees are planted
farther apart, to maximize growth rates, resulting in more widely
spaced growth rings, and a weaker wood.
In the near future, as even wood pulp becomes scarce due
to increased demand for cellulose-based fuels, we will no doubt remain
supplied with furniture made of rammed earth, with an attractive
faux-plastic adobe veneer, that is designed to fall apart when you
first try to install it, rather than when you first try to move it. It
would be used to furnish suburban mansions made of "housing bubbles,"
which also sounds like a weak material. But boats built in this manner
would not stay afloat for very long.
A revival of wooden boatbuilding could be used to
breathe life into forest conservation. It can provide a market for a
high value added forestry product that requires forests to be managed
sustainably, squeezing out the pulp and firewood farmers. If the boat
hulls are constructed close to where the timber is grown and harvested,
this can serve as the basis of a thriving local economy, allowing it to
diversify from logging and sawmills. Such efforts cannot begin soon
enough, because forests are under great stress throughout the planet,
from the encroachment of agriculture, from logging, and from insects
that are spreading further and further north due to global warming.
Regardless of one's choice of materials, it is possible
to do quite a lot better than the majority of production sailboats by
building one's own, backyard-style. Production boats are typically
designed with recreation in mind, to be used during relatively warm
weather, not for year-round on-board living in a cold climate. Many
production boats lack insulation, and often have little more than a
thin fiberglass shell between you and freezing water. Even when
equipped with electric, propane, or diesel heaters, they tend to be
cold and dank except during the summer, and prone to condensation and
mildew.
At some point in time, perhaps months, perhaps years
after the onset of the permanent, global energy shortage, those who had
a hand in engineering the current transportation cul de sac will have
an epiphany: the only remaining viable option is to revert to water
freight, using sail power wherever possible. Since constructing entire
new fleets of sailing ships while in the throes of a global energy
crisis will hardly fall within the realm of practical possibility,
their options will be limited to retrofits, and to the repurposing of
existing vessels.
One such retrofit is already being marketed by a German
company, under the name SkySails, and involves fitting out vessels such
as oil tankers and container ships with large kites that can pull them
downwind, allowing them to reduce oil consumption when moving in the
general direction of prevailing winds. Although potentially valuable as
a retrofit, it must be pointed out that this development is regressive,
sending us back 2000 years to a time when it was only possible to sail
downwind.
But we need not wait for epiphanies from those whose
paycheck depends on them not having any. Any able-bodied person with
the required skills, tools, materials, and half a year's time, can
build a perfectly acceptable boat that can serve as a floating house
and be used to cross oceans. The only thing missing from that list is a
set of plans.
Nothing focuses the mind of a design engineer like a
list of requirements. Let us then list out the requirements for a boat
that would work best for our stated purposes. It would certainly be
splendid if a credentialed naval architect or two rose to the challenge
of carrying out the design work. But even if all self-respecting naval
architects turn up their noses at something so unmarketable and
unfashionable, this should not spell disaster: sailboat design is a
rewarding area for a creative amateur as well as a professional.
The boat must provide accommodation, storage, and
transportation for a family. She must be seaworthy enough to cross
oceans, with generous fresh water tanks and plentiful storage space.
She should have shallow draft, to float over flooded lands and shoals,
into estuaries, and up and down rivers and canals, and a flat bottom,
to settle upright. The masts should be stepped in tabernacles and
rigged for easy lowering to pass under bridges and other obstructions.
She must be designed to be beached and dragged or rolled ashore without
suffering hull damage. She must be cheap to build, to maintain, and to
operate. She must not require the use of advanced metallurgy or
synthetics.
She must be designed not just for fair weather sailing,
but also to survive the typical set of worst case scenarios. The
increased frequency of extreme weather events will not add to the list
of worst case scenarios with which sailboats must be designed to cope.
However, since they will become more frequent, it will be even more
important that all boats be designed to handle them well. If the boat
has an open cockpit, causing the crew to swallow salt spray, which
causes dehydration, hallucinations, and kidney failure, or has a keel
that trips on water and causes a capsize, or has a tall mast and heavy
standing rigging that catches enough wind to cause pitchpoling when
running under bare poles, or insufficient internal ballast, causing
wild motion that breaks crew's ribs as they are tossed about the cabin,
then the design must be considered unacceptable, regardless of its
other advantages.
She must be both well-insulated and well-ventilated, to
protect her crew from the weather in any climate and season, both hot
and cold. The cockpit must be enclosed and all control lines must lead
inside the cockpit through baffles, protecting the crew from
hypothermia, heat stroke, being washed overboard, or swallowing
seawater. Since we expect there to be few rescue ships and helicopters
available, our boat must be able to serve as its own lifeboat,
containing enough flotation along the sides and the deck, and enough
solid ballast along the bottom, to be unsinkable and self-righting even
when holed and swamped.
She must look like a proper yacht, and not a shanty boat
or a barge, because she must give coastal property owners no reason to
complain to the harbormaster about the ugly thing spoiling their
precious view. She may be stacked to the gunwales with dried sea
squirrel, but to outward appearances (at least from a distance) she
should give the impression that she is sailed by people of obvious
quality and distinction, of the sort that snooty coastal property
owners might want to invite over for gin and tonics, to catch up on the
goings-on in San Tropez. She must have clean lines, a proper naval
paint scheme, a modicum of shiny fittings and varnished wood, and be
rigged to fly the appropriate flags in the customary way. In the
future, I expect coastal property owners to get downright excited when
they sight any sailboat, whether it looks fashionable or not, paddle
out their leaky canoes, and try to barter jewelry, silver cutlery or
pretty seashells for the things they desperately need. But until that
happens, it is important to appease their sense of sailboat aesthetics.
She should also look sufficiently conventional and
shipshape to give the U.S. Coast Guard no excuse to declare her
"manifestly unsafe," pull the crew off the boat unceremoniously, and
leave her foundering, which they have the right to do. But she should
look sufficiently unmarketable to avoid giving state and federal
authorities the impression that they could raise some money by seizing
her through forfeiture, for some made-up transgression, and auctioning
her off, which they also, unfortunately, have the right to do, and may
start doing out of desperation.
Since almost all contemporary sailboats are designed for
either sport or luxury, we can start with a blank slate, and dispense
with most of the preconceived notions of what a sailboat must be like.
However, there is an established style of boat that is so close to what
we want that there seems to be no reason not to start with it. It is
called the square boat, or the Bolger Box, after Phil Bolger, a naval
architect from Gloucester, Massachusetts, who is a renowned designer of
square boats and other unusual craft.
The shape is based on a fishing boat native to the Atlantic coast of the United States, called sharpie,
which started as the local Indian dugout, and which was once common all
along the east coast from Maine to the Florida Keys. The sharpie has a
sharp, vertical, wedge-like bow, from which it probably got its name, a
flat, rockered bottom, and vertical sides, stem, and transom. Sharpies
have been built in many sizes, from ten to fifty feet, but the sweet
spot seems to be around 32 feet. Sharpies are light and fast, and were
at one point banned from yacht racing because they won much too often,
causing embarrassment to paying members of the yacht-racing set, who
would rather lose than allow themselves to be seen sailing anything so
obviously working class.
That such simple shapes can be so effective seemed
paradoxical even to Bolger himself, who once wrote (of a boat of his, a
perfectly serviceable dinghy called "The Brick," which really is just a
box): "It's disconcerting that these box boats do everything better
than elaborately modeled boats of the same overall dimensions..." There
are few legitimate complaints about hull shape of the sharpie; among
them is the annoyance caused by the slapping, or, in heavier weather,
the pounding of the flat bottom against the water. Although this
problem can be remedied by giving the bottom a slight v-shape, called
"deadrise," at the bow and the stern, a much simpler and equally
effective solution is to extend the bottom of the bow a few inches
below the waterline.
Since a square boat is basically just four flat pieces
curved around and fastened to several bulkheads and a transom, building
one does not require molds or lofting (the painstaking task of
transferring dimensions from a scaled drawing to a loft floor), and is
well-suited to backyard construction. Bulkheads and the transom are cut
out according to measurements and aligned upside-down along two
straight pieces of dimensioned lumber, which is placed on two or more
sawhorses. The sides are glued up from plywood panels, then fastened
and glued to the stem and around the bulkheads, followed by the bottom.
The hull is then flipped, and interior structures are installed,
followed by the deck. In the process, flat pieces take up the right
curves, and the structure remains symmetrical by virtue of starting
with a stiff triangular box at the front. An outer layer of fiberglass
cloth and epoxy makes for a longer-lasting, harder-wearing boat.
A
40-foot sqare boat cabin cruiser built using the best modern materials
and methods available (plywood, fiberglass, and epoxy) requires
approximately half a year of near-full-time effort by one person before
she is ready for launch. The design is economical, and can be realized
for a fifth or less of the cost of a production sailboat of similar
size, putting it within reach of those whose means are quite limited.
With proper care, the resulting hull will last three decades or more.
And then there are some shortcuts. With some up-front
computer work using a CAD program, all the shapes can be pre-cut and
pre-drilled using a CNC machine to fit together like pieces of a jigsaw
puzzle. Using such a pre-cut kit, the hull can be assembled by a team,
using a few hand tools: mixers, rollers, and spatulas for epoxy, drills
for screws, and hammers for nails.
This
type of construction is common and practical using modern materials and
construction techniques. But even in their absence, the same hull shape
can be built using traditional techniques – the way it was once done by
fishermen from Maine to the Chesapeake.
The assembly can take place in three stages: sides
and bottom; interior; and deck, with sufficient time in between for
epoxying, fiberglassing, filleting, and painting. This barn-raising
approach can reduce construction time considerably, especially if
several boats are constructed in parallel. It can also be used to teach
valuable skills, and to help cement the relationships within a nascent
floating community.
The best places to build a boat are near water. In many
of the more developed parts of the world, the oldest and most
economically depressed parts of town are those near rivers and canals.
Many towns were founded on a river or a canal, but later turned toward
the railroads, and then the highways, leaving the old infrastructure
unused and decaying. It is often still there, and available. And
although upscale marinas and boatyards that service luxury yachts are
often busy and expensive, there are many working-class boatyards that
service workboats and fishing boats, most of which have been idled due
to depleted fish stocks, and much more affordable.
Any boat that carries sail must provide for sufficient
lateral resistance to keep the boat from developing sideways motion
(known as leeway) when it is moving in any direction other than
directly downwind. The device usually employed to counter this effect
is a keel. All the more recent racing designs use long, thin fin keels.
Keels are helpful on one point of sail: going to windward. They also
suffer from many serious shortcomings.
Keels tend to hit things underwater, or, even worse, get
stuck. In a particularly severe hit, the keel can come off, causing the
boat to float upside-down. This puts a limit on how close to shore the
boat can get, sometimes making it quite difficult to find an anchorage
that is simultaneously deep enough, sheltered enough, and close enough
to the shore. Boats with a fixed keel cannot be used on rivers and
canals. Some of them can no longer safely navigate parts of the
Intercoastal Waterway in the southern United States, which is not being
dredged due to cutbacks in federal funding. Deep-water marinas tend get
crowded mid-summer, and cost more than shallow-water marinas.
When riding out a storm, keelboats can trip over their
keel while sliding sideways down a steep wave and capsize, sometimes
losing their mast in the process. When caught in the shallows during an
ebbing tide, keel boats don't just settle – they fall over and lie on
their side. Keelboats cannot be pulled out of the water using a boat
ramp, but require a crane. Keels are usually ballasted, to make the
boat more stable, but this also makes the boat's motion in the waves
more severe than if the ballast is internal to the hull.
One of the alternatives to a fixed keel is a
centerboard, a pivoting fin that can be raised when approaching shallow
water, or simply be allowed bounce along the bottom without suffering
damage. A centerboard is housed in a centerboard trunk, a flat vertical
box that takes up the most valuable piece of cabin space, directly in
the center of the cabin. It also requires a slot to be cut through the
bottom of the hull, and a box built around it, which is flooded to the
waterline, and a hole in the bottom of the boat is not something to be
taken lightly. It gives seafood a place to dwell, and in cold weather
the outside of the centerboard trunk tends to form condensation. In
spite of these detractions, a centerboard is an excellent alternative
to a fixed keel.
Another alternative to a keel is leeboards, which are
downward-pointing fins hung on the outside of the hull. They are ugly,
noisy, and gather floating debris, which is a growing problem. (There
are now areas known as oceanic garbage zones, made up of photodegraded
plastic debris, one of which, in the Pacific, near the U.S. coast, has
grown to the size of Texas.) On the plus side, leeboards free up cabin
space.
Lastly, there is the new but reasonably well-tested
concept called "chine runners," pioneered by a dedicated hobbyist by
the name of Matt Leyden, who has used it on some tiny but quite
shockingly capable and seaworthy cruising sharpies. They were used on
32 and 40 foot sharpies designed by Chris Morejohn. Chine runners are
only applicable to square boats with vertical sides, and are formed by
extending the edges of the flat bottom sideways by a few inches past
the vertical sides, allowing the sides to act like keels.
Early experiments used chine runners to supplement a
centerboard; however, it was soon discovered that small boats can sail
quite passably to windward with the centerboard retracted. Chine
runners are structurally very simple, their cost is low, and they
suffer from none of the detractions of fixed keels, centerboards, or
leeboards. They are less effective for larger boats, because in order
for them to be effective the boat has to heel over quite far,
presenting a large vertical surface to the water, and it is easier to
make a small boat heel over than a large one, especially in light
winds.
The best combination seems to be a sharpie with both
chine runners and a centerboard, that goes well to windward with the
centerboard down, and can still sail passably to windward over
shallows, with the centerboard retracted. On a larger sharpie, windward
performance with the centerboard up is about 55-60 degrees to the wind,
no better than four knots, and sluggish tacking.
It is by no means certain, but quite conceivable that
sharpies with chine runners in addition to a centerboard will
follow
the same path as other great inventions. They will initially be met
with widespread incomprehension and outright dismissal. Once their many
advantages become apparent, they will come to be ridiculed. This may
seem strange but it is in fact quite typical. For instance, the modern
safety bicycle was initially greeted with derision by cavalry officers,
because bicyclists could not effectively fire weapons or wield sabers
while riding. When ridicule fails to check its spread, the new
invention comes to be accepted, albeit grudgingly. The last stage of
acceptance is reached when those who initially opposed the idea begin
to claim that they have been in favor of it all along.
By far the simplest thing to do with a square boat once
it is finished is to move in and live aboard without ever launching it.
Its vertical sides and flat bottom make its interior more like that of
a trailer home than a typical cruising sailboat. This may be a sensible
thing to do in an area prone to floods: the boat can be tethered
between two posts, floating up and settling as needed. When the land is
dry, one bicycles to get around; when flooded, one rows a canoe, or a
dinghy. This approach avoids real estate taxes, but may still require
one to own or lease land.
The second simplest thing is to have your new
waterproof home launched and towed out to a mooring, which, since the
boat only draws a couple of feet, does not have to be in deep water,
and can even dry out at low tide. For more money, one can rent a slip
at a marina, gaining access to such modern conveniences as pumped
water, electricity, on-shore showers and laundry, sewage pump-out
services, and wireless Internet access, available while global supplies
last. A mooring may work well during the warm months, when marinas are
crowded and cost more, while the services provided by a marina matter
more during the cold months.
The next, but by no means final step, is to outfit the
boat for inland and coastal sailing and motoring, with a small
four-stroke outboard motor, and a wardrobe of sails. A lot of other
sundry sailing gear is needed as well, some of it required by the Coast
Guard, some just useful: boat hooks, swim ladders, fenders, life
jackets, anchors, flares, and so on.
The motor can be omitted if there are two or more
strong-backed crew members, by equipping them with long oars, and the
boat with oarlocks and sculling notches in the bow and transom. Without
an engine, electricity for mooring lights (which are required) and
cabin lights can to be supplied by a solar panel and a wind turbine. An
inboard diesel is available as an option for those who enjoy
unnecessary expense, water and oil in the bilge, dragging a propeller
when under sail, and soot.
Sails need not cost thousands of dollars: for making
short trips in decent weather, a Junk sail can be rigged using
lumberyard supplies and construction tarp. For purely aesthetic
reasons, white tarp works better socially than the more common blue
tarp. If the boat only needs to move a short distance, at a time of
your choosing, in order to comply with local regulations for how long
you may remain anchored in any one place, this is all you would need.
At the other extreme, ocean passages require quite a
lot more equipment and preparation. There are, however, no technical
problems with a square boat taking to the open ocean, provided she is
well-built, equipped, and sailed with sufficient attention and skill.
It has been done many times by many people, in square boats big and
small.
A small cottage in the woods can be fitted out in a
number of ways. At one extreme is the self-sufficient rustic cabin,
with a quaint outhouse, a wood stove, and firewood stacked neatly under
the eaves. At the other extreme is a posh computer-controlled
techno-pod with every conceivable gadget built in, and a fat umbilical
chord that connects it to technological civilization, which supplies it
with a steady stream of high-tech replacement parts. Similarly, a boat
can be fitted out in any number of ways, from shantyboat-style to
luxury yacht-style.
The shantyboat may feature a stove that can burn
charcoal, wood, or dried sea squirrels. The heads (the nautical term
for latrine) can consist of a bucket with a tight-fitting lid and a
toilet seat. Water can be provided by a foot pump and some hoses
connecting it to the sink and the water tank. Refrigeration can be
provided by an icebox, illumination by flashlights, a kerosene lamp, or
candles. Mid-range, we find propane stoves, solar panels, wind
generators, composting toilets, (or flush toilets with on-board septic
tanks, which are not an unmitigated blessing by any means), and
electric or propane refrigerators.
The realm of pure luxury includes such things as
on-board washers and driers, central heating and air conditioning, and
a world-class fossil fuel habit to go with them. But that seems quite
unnecessary: plenty of people have managed to live aboard, and even
circumnavigate the globe, without such power-hungry gadgetry. A tank of
propane and a few of jerricans of fuel can last for many months at sea.
Regardless of whether the accommodations are Spartan or
palatial, living aboard and sailing have a great organizing effect on
the mind, and provide plenty of exercise for the body. The human mind
reacts well to challenging and even dangerous circumstances provided
the danger can be controlled without resulting in stress. Living a
long, happy life just a few consecutive mistakes away from drowning is
just that sort of danger.
For the body, the work of opposing the motion of the
boat, which is more or less constant, provides isometric exercise
similar to a Pilates workout, and people who live aboard are rarely
overweight. When the boat is underway, everyone has a job to do, acting
as a team, and someone always has to be in command. Some families and
friends find that they cannot do this; others take naturally to it, are
sometimes much improved by it, and in the end come resemble a
well-oiled machine, with set roles and sure, almost choreographed
movements.
The transition to living aboard can be quite tricky.
Firstly, one's earthly possessions must be pared down to the bare
essentials, which are all that will fit on a boat. Then one must get
used to the constant motion, the sounds, the smells, and the lack of
privacy. Everyone, including cats and dogs, initially gets seasick, but
eventually adjusts, although a stormy night in an unprotected anchorage
never becomes pleasant.
Living aboard is just fine for infants, a bit tricky
for toddlers, and just fine for preadolescent children. Adolescents
are, of course, difficult, sometimes to the point of requiring a boat
of their own, which can be towed when underway, in case they become too
preoccupied with being adolescents to steer a course. Old people range
from salty dogs who have trouble falling asleep "on the hard" to
landlubbers who get queasy just looking at sailboats bobbing about
while toying with their food at the marina restaurant.
A good marina can provide a community of a quality that
is not often found on land, with the proviso that one likes quite a lot
of company and does not mind spending a lot of time in close quarters
with other people. Marinas tend to be like small villages, where
everyone gets to know everyone else's business, sometimes
inadvertently. This can get to be too much, and degenerate into soap
opera. Sound caries well over water, and people who cannot hear
themselves shouting at someone close by often can and do hear the
ensuing chuckles, or groans, coming from quite far away. But living
aboard makes it relatively easy and inexpensive to get away and stay
somewhere else, for a night, a week, or a season, at a nearby
anchorage, or, given enough time, halfway across the world.
While it is by no means for everyone, living aboard is
one of the few ways available to people of modest means to live in a
city of their choice, own their residence free and clear, never pay a
penny of real estate tax, and vacation for as long as and wherever they
please, remaining debt-free all the while. It can be much less
expensive than living on land, freeing up much time for things other
than work, such as providing home schooling for one's children,
traveling the world, spending time with friends and family, or just
quietly contemplating this crazy world, which is spinning further and
further out of control with each passing day.
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Hunt, Terry L. 2006, Rethinking the Fall of Easter Island, American Scientist.
Lindqvist, Sven 1997, Exterminate All the Brutes, London: Granta.
Moore, J. 1991, By Way of the Wind, New York: Sheridan House
Nicholas, Mark 2005, Living Aboard a Boat, Paradise Cay.
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© Copyright 2006 Dmitry Orlov, Some Rights Reserved.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike
2.5 License.