Back To The "(Un)Real World"
Time to see friends and family, which means hopping on some planes.
Since I returned from my fortress of solitude in Nonsuch Bay last week, I have: 1) Joined a group expedition to St. John (capital of Antigua) to renew my cruising permit, and provision at the largest supermarket I have ever seen in any place that is warm through the winter; 2) Gone out to dinner multiple times; 3) Not enjoyed a hangover following one of the dinners; and 4) Welcomed a great friend aboard for a mini-cruise that was a great pleasure. In short, I have had plenty of excellent human company, and my socializing deficit has been turned into a surplus. So I am totally okay being back on my own for a few days as I prep Laughing Gull to nest on a mooring for three weeks while I head to Washington DC for the holidays.
Currently, I am in Freeman Bay, the tiny and popular anchorage in English Harbour. If there aren’t any too-close-packed boats bumping into you, it is a very nice spot (though with a bit of a roll). The water is cleaner than Falmouth (better for swimming and making water). There is snorkeling that is as depressing as anywhere else, but plenty of reef fish to look at. There are a couple of nice hikes nearby. And, to really raise the anchorage’s proprietary Laughing Gull rating system score, there is a great beach bar ashore. It features a decent plant-burger, chili-oil drizzled edamame, delicious vegan sushi rolls, golden, crispy french fries AND ice cream. Pretty much my idea of a perfect menu. Oh, I almost forgot to mention the local bakery sends a boat through the anchorage every morning with fresh croissants and baguettes.
It’s a pretty pleasant place to organize my list of banal boat and admin chores I need to take care of before abandoning ship—everything from fixing a persistent and very, very, annoying water drip under the galley sink to applying for a National Park Service pass that I can use in St. John.
Living aboard is all about lists, adding to them and, sometimes (hopefully), reducing them. There is no such thing as a sailboat with an empty to-do list. The only question is whether it is completely out of control or just a little out of control. There is a reason that cruising is often described as doing boatwork in beautiful places. That describes my current reality pretty accurately. My list has suddenly got me waking up in the middle of the night, which means I need to crank through the most important items at expedited pace to find peace again. Ever the procrastinator, I am glad to have a deadline (I head north to winter on Thursday).
There is always a part of me that regrets hopping on a plane (round trip from Antigua to DC and back emits about 1.5 tons of CO2 equivalent—which is about 1.5 times the emissions of my diet for an entire year and almost 20% of my current estimated annual footprint). So a huge hit. While I set a pretty high threshold these days for what justifies a plane ride, seeing family, especially my kids, is not something I am willing to sacrifice. What also makes this trip more tolerable to my peculiar way of thinking is that it is possibly my last flight for the foreseeable future. At the moment, I don’t have any other air trips planned or under consideration, and my usual pilgrimage to Ireland next summer will not be by air. It will be by Laughing Gull (assuming all goes well with my lists between now and then). Once in Europe, it is pretty easy to get around without an airplane, which is an experience I look forward to taking advantage of. There is a reason so many Europeans have been able to make a no-flying pledge compared to Americans.
I am excited to see everyone in DC. But I am bracing myself for the full American Christmas/holiday season consumption frenzy, which has long raised my scorn. Before I am dismissed as a Grinch (though the moral of The Grinch Stole Christmas is that kindness, love, and community are more important than material possessions, so I am okay with the label), I should clarify that I am all in favor of the ideals at the heart of Christmas, just not the consumption tsunami that has swamped those ideals thanks to modern marketing and a relentless profit motive. So I am hoping to turn Christmas into Thanksgiving (emphasis not on buying stuff, but on good food, good friends, lots of family time) since I missed Thanksgiving this year (two round trips by air from Antigua seemed a bit much). We’ll see how that goes. Definitely swimming against the commercial tide.
Notable (To Me) Notes:
If you want a good carbon calculator for your life, and for flying, this one works pretty well.
It won’t surprise you to know that my superyacht buddies here in Antigua are blowing up aviation emissions with private jet travel and lots and lots of flying:
About a quarter million of the super wealthy — worth a total of $31 trillion — last year emitted 17.2 million tons (15.6 million metric tons) of carbon dioxide flying in private jets, according to Thursday’s study in the Nature journal Communications Earth & Environment. That’s about the same amount as the 67 million people who live in Tanzania,
Private jet emissions jumped 46% from 2019 to 2023, according to the European research team that calculated those figures by examining more than 18.6 million flights of about 26,000 airplanes over five years….
The highest emitting private jet user that the team tracked — but did not identify by name — spewed 2,645 tons (2,400 metric tons) of carbon dioxide in plane use, Gossling said. That’s more than 500 times the global per person average of either 5.2 tons (4.7 metric tons) that the World Bank calculates or the 4.7 tons (4.3 metric tons) that the International Energy Agency figures and Gossling cites…
Earlier this year the International Energy Agency calculated that the world’s top 1% of super-emitting people had carbon footprints more than 1,000 times bigger than the globe’s poorest 1%.
Gossling’s study counted more than 35,600 tons (32,300 metric tons) of carbon pollution from just five global events — 2022’s World Cup in Qatar, 2023’s World Economic Forum, 2023’s Super Bowl, the 2023 Cannes film festival and the 2023 United Nations climate negotiations in Dubai. That came from 3,500 private jet flights.
If people are flying private jets to climate conferences that tells you something is comically and terribly wrong with how we are approaching the dangerous warming of the planet.
Want to help vital, climate-protecting, whale populations? Don’t use Omega-3 supplements or eat farmed salmon, because those industries are devastating krill populations, a major food source for many whales:
More than a dozen supertrawlers are licensed to fish for krill, a tiny crustacean and key food source for whales, dolphins and other animals that travel thousands of miles to feed on it.
Krill populations have declined by 80 per cent since 1970, as the industry expands for use in omega-3 supplements, aquaculture feed, pet food and cosmetics…
The primary market driver of krill fishing is the demand for omega-3 health supplements. Growing concerns over the heavy metal contamination of fish from which omega-3 has traditionally been derived are leading to what Hammarstedt describes as companies “capitalising on the image of the pristine unpolluted waters of Antarctica”.
The rise in krill fishing is also linked to an increase in aquaculture as wild fish populations decline. The flesh of wild salmon is naturally pink because they eat krill and other small crustaceans, but farmed salmon will be grey unless fed additives. Hammarstedt says, “Although it will taste exactly the same as wild salmon, people are not going to buy grey salmon flesh at supermarkets.”
Chart Of The Day:
Humanity spends $2.39 trillion dollars a year on destructive wars, military equipment, and personnel (the US alone is responsible for 43% of that total). That’s $2.39 trillion annually that is not helping combat climate change, poverty, biodiversity loss, pandemics and a litany of other pressing challenges. Just imagine all the more constructive uses for that spending if we could somehow evolve human civilization to a place where conflict is resolved peacefully and without resort to arms. That would mean transcending the existing nation-state model, which promotes ethno-nationalism, conflict and competition. And promoting the structures, mechanisms, and ways of thinking needed to unite humanity into a single global community that addresses global threats together.
I know it seems like a ridiculous aspiration (like many of my aspirations). But for so many reasons it is without question where we need to go.
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Travel safe and have a Merry Xmas with family
Congrats! And good luck! I like the thoughtful solution you came up with.