Given you have the patience to read further, you might find some ideas/products/innovations that will help make your precious boat as green as possible, not in colour – unless you of course like that. But what do we mean by green or sustainable anyway? Well, mostly being as mindful and gentle towards nature as possible. In other words to have as little of an impact as possible. We would hate to sound like preachers or sustainability gurus, especially since we are well aware that our own cruising is not particularly sustainable or green. But we would love for it to be more environmentally friendly, so combined with technological advancements, tips & tricks and maybe some advice from you, we will hopefully soon have a better roadmap towards a greener boat.
*After writing most of articles for our little segment on “a greener boat”, we came across the organization Sailorsforsea, who has created a similar guide and is most likely even better than ours 😑. So we reinvented the wheel again. But maybe you’ll like our kind of writing – i.e. useful information (hopefully) combined with some lame jokes. We will try to link additional sources and stay open minded. Bottom line it’s great to see a movement towards greener sailing, as it will take big steps from all of us.
Overall, a boat by itself is a dirty business. Toxic paint and other materials, leaky engines, hard to recycle etc. In many ways it is kind of a lost cause, but let’s not give up. Fortunately, there are some simple things you can easily consider to diminish your impact. Sail more and motor less, reduce cleaning, keep the engine in good shape, and consider clean practices when dealing with toxic waste (oil, coolants, paint or other dust from sanding, old batteries). Another step is also to use less of the above, renew bottom paint only every other season, use salt water to keep your deck/teak clean & fresh, polish less, and use very mild eco friendly cleaning products if absolutely needed.
But lets also agree that often some of the ‘dirty’ practices are hard to avoid. That might be due to lack of alternatives or down to practicalities, or simply because of money (as some call it Green Premiums- the additional cost of choosing a sustainable alternative over one that has a more negative environmental impact). The later might actually be the main factor contributing to most of our decisions regarding sustainability. We simply struggle to afford things that would harm less. But that’s changing rapidly and we will try to give some more specific suggestions on the next pages.
A quick disclaimer however beforehand, we are no experts, nor do we perform particularly well on these suggestions ourselves, but we strive to get there and we are nerdy enough to continuously look out for new innovations, practices and ideas. Most things might be obvious to most of you, but there might be something you haven’t considered, or that we haven’t (more likely) – so please share and let’s go down this road together.
A Green Heading 