De-Gasification

Incremental steps...

St. Augustine is all abut the lights. And here is a pretty, local Hinkley set up for the lighted boat parade.

Before I headed south from the Chesapeake Bay last month I did something I had wanted to do for quite a while: I sold my car. It was a 2013 Toyota Prius, and I am not claiming any major sacrifice. I kept it while it was useful to drive back and forth to Annapolis, and for my children to use as a high school car. But they didn’t really need it anymore, and I didn’t either. So the temptation to get rid of it was irresistible. That’s about 200 gallons of gas a year, and various expenses, which I can happily toss from my life. You have to seize your opportunities if you are trying to reboot your lifestyle.

Last week I did something else: I gave away a malfunctioning gas outboard to another cruiser in the St. Augustine anchorage, who seemed like he could really use it (if he can get it running again). Instead, I acquired an electric outboard, which is wonderfully silent and pushes the dinghy along fine. It is not a go anywhere, go anytime type of outboard—the battery would drain fast in a stiff wind over distance. So it is less convenient in certain circumstances. But as with many technologies which are less polluting, you have to adapt to whatever limitations they might have, and these are limitations I am pretty sure I can live with. Not as sexy as a Ludicrous mode Tesla, but the same basic idea of trying to electrify what can be electrified.

My dinghy is no longer like the others. Time will determine if I end up with moments of gas-outboard envy.

The outboard wasn’t a huge source of fuel consumption (more like gallons a year). But I hate carrying gas containers aboard the boat, even though the Able Apogee 50 has a very good place for them in the transom step. Inevitably, in re-fueling the outboard or in rough seas, gas spills either on the boat, into the sea, on you, or all of the above. It smells and it pollutes. Nothing like an outboard to get you up close and personal with the noxious qualities of a combustion engine. (One side note: before the electric outboard arrived I went old-school and simply rowed in and out from the dock, timing my outings as much as possible to take advantage of the tides. The sight of someone rowing in 2023 is apparently so unusual that on numerous occasions other boaters came over to me and asked if I was okay and needed a tow. They seemed quite shocked when I said I didn’t and was enjoying the exercise).

In any case, after ditching my car I was feeling that sort of fever you get when you start de-cluttering, or de-whatevering: every incremental step feels disproportionately good. It does run the risk—as with buying a Tesla, say—of making you feel like you have done more than you actually have, which in turn can lead to less acknowledgement and urgency with regard to all the other carbon-spewing aspects of a modern American life. Still, every step counts, and if you string enough steps together you start getting somewhere. Plus, it simplifies a goal I have, which is the antidote to electrification-induced complacency: and that is to be able to more easily calculate and track my carbon footprint, so I can see how low I can go with it.

Here is the simplification: with this recent round of de-gasification, Laughing Gull’s generator and engine are the principal carbon combustion engines powering my life. So monitoring my diesel consumption will give me a pretty quick proxy for how much fuel a good chunk of my life consumes. A nice bonus is that my diesel consumption on Laughing Gull also covers all my “utilities”: heat, electric, and water production.

Hard to avoid a simple conclusion: We Americans are climate hogs.

My current rough estimate is that I burn about 200 gallons of diesel a year, which is a CO2 equivalent (CO2Eq) of about 2 metric tons. According to Our World In Data (which supplied the chart above), the average American is responsible for about 15 metric tons of CO2Eq. And the richest 10% of Americans average a whopping 55 metric tons CO2Eq annually (if you want a sense of how disproportionate America’s climate impact is the richest Europeans have a footprint of around 24 metric tons CO2Eq, and most Europeans have a carbon footprint that is about half that of an average American). I aim to see if I can get down toward the global per capita average of around 5 metric tons per person.

So what stands between me and this carbon footprint goal? Mostly one thing: air travel, which is the most carbon intensive thing I do. I’ll talk about how I am thinking about that in a future post.

In the meantime I will stay in St. Augustine through Christmas, and then resume my migration south. The anchorages here are super-tricky due to the ripping current, but coordinating with your neighbors is one way to get to know other cruisers. Last night a front with 35 knot gusts pushed through, and happily there was no real drama (though no real sleep either). But the fun will continue later this week, with a strong northeaster forecast. So this morning I moved to an anchorage in the lee of Anastasia Island to try and be protected from that. It is kind of tight, and when the ebb got going against the chilly northerly a few hours ago Laughing Gull did a full 360 before settling down. So anchorage stress won’t ease fully until the weekend. All part of the game.

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