{"id":16179,"date":"2015-04-22T00:05:00","date_gmt":"2015-04-22T07:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/live-hakamagwp.pantheonsite.io\/features\/sailing-farmer-steers-toward-post-carbon-future"},"modified":"2021-04-22T14:15:12","modified_gmt":"2021-04-22T21:15:12","slug":"sailing-farmer-steers-toward-post-carbon-future","status":"publish","type":"custom_features","link":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/features\/sailing-farmer-steers-toward-post-carbon-future\/","title":{"rendered":"A Sailing Farmer Steers Toward a Post-Carbon Future"},"content":{"rendered":"

Congratulations to Lina Zeldovich on winning a silver award from the North American Travel Journalists Association<\/a> for this article.<\/p>\n

Wearing a chemical respirator, Vermont farmer Erik Andrus lay underneath his home-built sailboat painting layers of epoxy resin over a fresh fiberglass patch on the boat\u2019s leaky bottom. The boat was perched atop a trailer centimeters above his face, offering him little space to maneuver. Another gooey fiberglass patch was stuck to one hand and glue dripped on his head. It was midsummer 2013 and Andrus was neglecting his rice crop, fixing the stubborn leaks instead. His Vermont Sail Freight Project\u2014launched that spring and now months behind schedule\u2014was in peril. But Andrus had a goal: to prove that he could economically deliver food to market by water and wind. So, for now, boat repairs trumped farming.<\/p>\n

Andrus is the kind of guy who puzzles over why, in the face of tremendous evidence, people continue to do things they know are ultimately maladaptive. And once he learned about the dangers of pollution from the shipping industry, he envisioned a new way\u2014while reviving an old one\u2014of shipping cargo by water. A cultural shift in perspective, he thought, would preserve the future for a world drunk on oil. Perhaps his project could help people make this shift by giving them a greater appreciation for hard work, craftsmanship, and experience; and a greater awareness of the importance of local ties.<\/p>\n

Wind and water, Andrus thought, could be a solution to the problem of transporting his organically grown crops to market. Non-perishable produce didn\u2019t have to be rushed from his house just outside Vergennes, Vermont, to New York City\u2014a six-hour drive by gas-powered trucks\u2014to just sit in a warehouse. It could travel by the historic waterway route of Lake Champlain and then down the Hudson River.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to grow 2,000 pounds [900 kilograms] of grain using draft horses for ploughing, planting, and harvesting, and raft it down the Hudson to prove the point that we can grow products and move them around the region without fossil fuels,\u201d says Andrus, whose broad-shoulders and inviting smile radiate infectious vigor. His original raft idea mutated into a bigger operation: a 12-meter-long sailboat that functions as a cargo barge\u2014named Ceres<\/em> after the Roman goddess of agriculture\u2014and capable of carrying over 100 other products, including potatoes, onions, squashes, and maple syrup. His fellow farmers loved the idea. \u201cEveryone I talked to in my local community, they thought, \u2018Let\u2019s do it,\u2019\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

<\/a>

Vermont farmer Erik Andrus on the deck of Ceres<\/em>, the sailing barge he built and helped sail down the Hudson River to market in New York City. Photo by Jim Pepper<\/p><\/div>\n

Several foundations agreed to support the project and Andrus\u2019s Kickstarter campaign netted over $16,000. Andrus\u2019s research showed that a sailboat would cost $100,000, but a boatbuilder specializing in small vessels suggested a cheaper method: a \u201cstitch-and-glue\u201d technique that would need only lumber and plywood, coated in fiberglass and sealed with resin, to build the hull. Andrus, who trained as a carpenter and had once spent a summer at boatbuilding school, converted his barn to a shipyard and set to work.<\/p>\n

Naval architect, Geoff Uttmark, who looked over Andrus\u2019s design describes him as a \u201cvisionary who is willing to work hard.\u201d The perfect combination to get people excited. Word of Andrus\u2019s plan spread, and volunteers\u2014from high school students to skilled professionals\u2014from near and far joined the project. Rig designers, a sailmaker, and another boatbuilder lent their expertise. For a captain, Andrus invited Steve Schwartz, a veteran sailor from the Beacon Sloop Club, a non-profit sailing organization and environmental advocacy group that focuses on the Hudson River.<\/p>\n

Tending to crops on his 40.5-hectare farm, building a boat, and running a marketing campaign, while being a husband and a dad of two sons ages five and seven at the time, threw Andrus\u2019s life into chaos. \u201c[There were] a variety of people coming and going, some of them would stay on the farm, some would come for dinner,\u201d says Andrus\u2019s wife, Erica, a lecturer at the University of Vermont who holds a PhD in religious studies. She was both supportive and skeptical, and concerned that Andrus was stretching himself thin. \u201cIt\u2019s not possible to do this project and be a successful rice farmer,\u201d she recalls. But the two were used to playing each other\u2019s foil. \u201cErica is the one who does the same thing day in and day out and I am the one who comes up with crazy ideas,\u201d Andrus says.<\/p>\n

But despite the help and Andrus\u2019s best efforts, the project fell behind schedule. When Captain Schwartz arrived from Poughkeepsie, New York, in August, excited to take command, Ceres<\/em>, a boxy, blue-hulled vessel that\u2019s a quirky and appealing blend of yacht and barge, wasn\u2019t shipshape. Sails were missing and Andrus was still fixing leaks. Schwartz and the crew were supposed to spend the month test-sailing Ceres<\/em> before taking off in early September from Lake Champlain and sailing the almost 500 kilometers down the Hudson River to New York City, arriving about three weeks later. \u201cWhen I first saw the boat I was a little freaked out because the boat didn\u2019t look suitable enough to go into New York Harbor,\u201d Schwartz recalls, comparing his first impression to online dating. \u201cThe picture you get is of a beautiful girl and then you meet this girl in a coffee shop and she doesn\u2019t quite look as good.\u201d The verdict he gave to Andrus was blunt. \u201cYou can\u2019t take this boat on the water,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s not going to make it.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/a>

Illustration by Mark Garrison<\/p><\/div>\n

Determined, Andrus hauled the barge out of the water, and, in the summer heat, sweated under the hull, patching and polishing the fiberglass. He also added an outboard motor for backup. This meant that Ceres<\/em> wouldn\u2019t be 100 percent fossil fuel-free, but safety won over idealism. Repairs took days\u2014causing a rescheduling with the New York City\u2019s New Amsterdam Market where most of the produce was to be sold\u2014but, in the end, the boat seemed seaworthy.<\/p>\n

On October 3, Ceres<\/em> hoisted its sails in Ferrisburgh, near Vergennes, and headed for its first port of call\u2014Orwell, Vermont, 50 kilometers away, where it would pick up almost 11 tonnes of produce, grain, and maple syrup bound for New York City. On board was a crew of three: Andrus, Schwartz, and a college kid, Jordan Finkelstein. \u201cThe first night we sailed I slept with my arm hanging off the bed on the floor so I could feel the water coming up if we\u2019d start to sink,\u201d Schwartz recalls. But he was anxious to prove that a wind-powered boat could compete, even if on an infinitesimal scale, with the giant container ships that sailed the world over. \u201cThe idea of sailing, not motoring, had been reverberating with me like a tuning fork,\u201d he says. \u201cI decided I\u2019m going to make it work or die trying.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

In studies<\/a> from 2007 and 2009, James Corbett, from the University of Delaware, and his colleagues reported that pollution from ocean shipping resulted in the premature deaths of as many as 60,000 people worldwide in 2002. The problem lies in how ships\u2019 engines work.<\/p>\n

On one hand, large container ships are more efficient than trucks and planes\u2014about 90 percent of consumer goods are transported by sea, yet the ships produce only about three percent of all greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. The largest ships can carry almost 20,000 containers. The amount a single large container ship can carry is more than the total amount of cargo shipped globally by air on an average day, says Gavin Allwright, a sustainable transport consultant and a secretary of the International Windship Association in Great Britain. This efficiency tends to make people forget about the mortality and health impacts associated with shipping.<\/p>\n

Ships run on bunker fuel, a toxic, tar-like by-product of oil refining, left behind after distilling products such as gasoline, kerosene, and lubricant oils. \u201cIt\u2019s basically toxic waste,\u201d Allwright says. \u201cIf you didn\u2019t burn it in a ship you\u2019d have to recycle it very expensively because it\u2019s nasty stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

The shipping industry is responsible for 15 percent of nitric oxide emissions and 13 percent of sulfur oxide emissions\u2014the gasses that cause acid rains. Along with concerns about harmful health effects from gasses, there are also concerns about soot, the tiny black particles spewed from the ships\u2019 diesel engines. \u201cShips\u2019 engines are very amazing technologies,\u201d says Corbett. \u201cThey achieve the complete combustion of hydrocarbons, burning fuel very efficiently. But the trade-off is human health. Some particles resulting from combustion are so small that our body can\u2019t expel them, so they settle in our lungs contributing to cardiopulmonary diseases. As 70 percent of the shipping traffic occurs near the coastline, these emissions can impact the air quality and health of coastal communities.\u201d<\/p>\n

The cost of fuel and tightening emission regulations near coastlines are pushing shipping companies to experiment with new technologies. For example, Beluga Shipping, a major product carrier, tried adding towing kites to their ships in 2008. The experiment reduced fuel consumption, but kites are unstable and can crash into the sea, says Michael Vahs, a captain and a professor of ship operation and navigation at Hochschule Emden-Leer University in Germany. B9 Shipping uses an experimental hybrid model with gas engines and electronically controlled sails but masts and sails get in the way of the cranes that unload ships in ports. The Maritime Department of Hochschule Emden-Leer University is developing the Flettner Rotor, a rig-less wind propulsion system that uses spinning rotors to create an aerodynamic effect to pull ships forward. This leaves the deck clear and usable for cranes. \u201cIt\u2019s quite promising,\u201d says Vahs. But it\u2019s not close to being mass-produced yet.<\/p>\n

Andrus doesn\u2019t think that adding kites and sky sails to big ships will save the planet. \u201cYou\u2019re taking an industry that by its very nature is hugely wasteful and you are putting a sail on it to make it a little bit less wasteful,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s not enough for me. I don\u2019t want to just decrease the diesel bill for container ships, I want to totally reinvent the way we get food to market.\u201d To prove that a slow transport brand could compete with the status quo, Ceres<\/em>\u2019s maiden voyage had to be a success. A \u201cnoble failure,\u201d Andrus says, was not an option.<\/p>\n

\n

Watching inexperienced volunteers loading Ceres<\/em> with the produce, Schwartz grew alarmed. \u201cNo one who was handling the cargo had ever loaded a boat before!\u201d he explains, adding that even weight distribution was critical. \u201cIf we hit harsh weather, the boat could sink from the cargo shifting.\u201d He worried about the barge\u2019s thin fiberglass skin that, in his opinion, could scratch, causing leaks. And he worried about its overall strength because it was built from plywood and lumber by a bunch of volunteers. \u201cAll of these things didn\u2019t give me great confidence to go venturing in the world of big ships,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Lake Champlain\u2019s fair winds put Schwartz temporarily at ease. Ceres<\/em> was spacious and comfortable, and the wide lake had few obstacles. The tension returned as the lake narrowed into the canals leading to the Hudson River and Schwartz had to maneuver the 12-meter-long barge through 15-meter-wide canals with the \u201cpuny twenty-horsepower motor.\u201d He managed to get Ceres<\/em> through all 12 locks without incident; the crew was jubilant. The teeny motor certainly helped on this first voyage, but they were sailing. Their first sales were made in the markets of Newburgh, Beacon, Nyack, and other riverbank towns in New York where locals welcomed the barge and eagerly bought the potatoes, carrots, squashes, and maple syrup.<\/p>\n

\"On<\/a>

On its maiden voyage, Ceres stopped in Newburgh, Beacon, Nyack, and other riverbank towns in New York, selling potatoes, carrots, squashes, maple syrup, and other goods to locals. Photo by Jim Pepper<\/p><\/div>\n

For Schwartz, however, the journey through the locks was the calm before the storm. Ceres<\/em> was now approaching New York Harbor. From the George Washington Bridge to 79th Street, Schwartz would have to watch out for barges and small tankers. From 79th to 42nd streets, Weehawken ferries and ocean liners shared the waterway. And from 42nd Street down, all the water taxis and sightseeing vessels would join in, whizzing by Ceres<\/em> in all directions. \u201cWhen you go slow like the sailboat goes,\u201d Schwartz says, \u201cthey get annoyed and they cut close.\u201d<\/p>\n

At dawn on Thursday, October 24, Ceres<\/em> was gliding underneath the George Washington Bridge and into New York waters. The New Amsterdam Market was only a few kilometers away, in Lower Manhattan, and the Brooklyn Navy Yard where Ceres<\/em> would dock, was just a bit farther. In between, lay the perilous harbor, which the little boat had to cross to prove that it could indeed sail its way into a greener future.<\/p>\n

\n

For Peter Nuttall, research associate for sustainable sea transport at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji, the greener future is more than abstract ideals. Climate change is a global issue, in Nuttall\u2019s opinion, and to help keep the planet\u2019s temperature from climbing even further, the shipping world has some serious work to do. \u201cAs the overall quantity of goods being shipped is dramatically increasing, so will the overall level of emissions,\u201d he says. \u201cWe need to change how we ship things globally.\u201d<\/p>\n

Governed by its own regulatory body, the International Maritime Organization (IMO), commercial shipping is essentially a private industry, Nuttall says. When the world\u2019s nations collectively agreed to the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, international shipping was removed and responsibility for reducing its share of emissions passed to the IMO. \u201cShipping doesn\u2019t like being regulated,\u201d he says. \u201cWhen foreign ministers go to New York or to Lima to negotiate on climate change, they do not negotiate on shipping.\u201d And across the world, talk about renewable energy has become synonymous with renewable electricity generation. Wind is only talked about for power turbines, while sails are the oldest and most efficient wind devices we have. When people do discuss low-carbon technologies for transport, people think bikes, trains, and electric cars, he says. The world allocates development funding for cycling infrastructure and trains, but not for innovations in shipping.<\/p>\n

Isabelle Rojon, a senior researcher at Fathom Shipping in Great Britain, explains the hurdles of commercializing wind propulsion for shipping in her paper co-written with Carel Dieperink, \u201cBlowin\u2019 in the wind?: Drivers and barriers for the uptake of wind propulsion in international shipping.\u201d<\/a> For example, there\u2019s no common vision for wind propulsion technology, there are no institutions directly promoting the technology, and there\u2019s little collaboration between technology providers and ship owners. And even if shipping companies innovated with sail technologies, existing port crane infrastructure is incompatible with masts and sails. With few incentives, financial or otherwise, for either ship owners or port authorities to change the status quo, it is no wonder that innovation in the industry is stalled.<\/p>\n

But this void in innovation results in creative space for the little guys like Andrus to experiment with unconventional ideas. And there\u2019s a resurging interest in wind propulsion around the world, from traditional wood-and-canvas schooners to novel high-tech vessels. \u201cFrom Northern Ireland to Fiji, small players are building and sailing cargo ships,\u201d Andrus says. Vahs and Nuttall expect the sustainable ship propulsion concepts to evolve from grassroots. \u201cIt\u2019s a lot easier to try new things with a little boat than a big boat,\u201d Nuttall says. \u201cAnd the big boys are all watching what\u2019s happening at the small scale,\u201d he adds, so they may one day adopt the technology that proves to work. Andrus, however, has a different theory. \u201cThe status quo will eventually have some sort of a crisis,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd the smaller players will be adaptable, and the larger ones won\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

The harbor\u2019s dangers came not from the big ships but from the wakes they created. A big wave could have swept over the motor\u2014which Schwartz needed to maneuver safely in the harbor\u2014and shut it off for good. \u201cIt would be embarrassing to have to call the Coast Guard and say \u2018come save us we don\u2019t have our engine and we\u2019ve lost control,\u2019\u201d Schwartz says. Worse, ordering a new motor could take a couple of weeks. By then the upstate canals would have closed for the winter and Ceres<\/em> would be stuck in New York. That would ruin Andrus\u2019s proof of concept, Schwartz says. \u201cIt\u2019s not what I promised to Erik.\u201d<\/p>\n

So Schwartz improvised. Sometimes he\u2019d shut off the motor before a wave and restart it when it passed. Sometimes he\u2019d face the waves with the boat\u2019s bow, rolling over them to smooth the impact using the cargo\u2019s weight. Sometimes he had to steer the boat in weird circles to get through the chop. A few times the motor cut out altogether, leaving the sailors floating against the soaring Manhattan skyline in nerve-racking silence. But they were lucky. \u201cThe sailing gods and the marketing gods and the harbor gods were looking out for us,\u201d Schwartz says. By 2:00 p.m., Ceres<\/em> docked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Within the next few days, Andrus sold all of Ceres<\/em>\u2019s remaining cargo at the New Amsterdam Market, beating the local prices. The farmers made a normal profit on their goods, which Andrus had bought wholesale, and Andrus\u2014on this maiden voyage\u2014broke even.<\/p>\n

On October 31, Ceres<\/em> crossed the harbor again on its way back to Vermont, passing through the canals in time for winter. \u201cAfter we got out of New York alive, I thought Erik is a genius and he built a great boat, and he knew what he was doing,\u201d Schwartz recalls. \u201cAnd I learned that the boat is stronger than I thought,\u201d he adds. Ceres<\/em> will sail again this summer.<\/p>\n

As a proof of concept, the Vermont Sail Freight Project was successful. But as a feasible commercial operation it still has many hurdles to overcome. To build his slow transport fleet, Andrus\u2019s boats will have to be assembled in shipyards by professional contractors, manned by professional sailors, and promoted by professional marketers, all while he tends to his crops. To scale up, he needs investors and money. \u201cThe project exists because of my unwillingness to give up,\u201d he admits, but a viable business needs more. \u201cI need to get paid and I need the ability to pay other people.\u201d So can wind energy successfully deliver food or other cargo to customers? Is Andrus\u2019s Vermont Sail Freight Project fashion, folly, or the future?<\/p>\n

Lincoln Paine, a maritime historian and the author of The Sea & Civilization<\/em>, wouldn\u2019t categorize the project as any of the three. He doesn\u2019t think the world will go back to delivering produce under sail exclusively, but he salutes the idea as a symbol of a green economy. A. Steven Toby, a naval architect with Alion Science and Technology, views it as a fashion statement perhaps with a grain of folly thrown in. \u201cThey did a brave thing,\u201d he admits. \u201cThey demonstrated the value of the so-called \u2018short-sea shipping\u2019 over on-land transport.\u201d It makes a lot of sense to ship non-perishable cargo over the Hudson River, Toby says, but he sees no future in wooden sailboats with old-fashioned rigs. He thinks scaling a 12-tonne sailboat to 150 tonnes and sending it from London to Australia is impractical. \u201cThe world has moved on. I don\u2019t think it\u2019ll go back to this technology,\u201d he says. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t buy stock in their company, I don\u2019t think it\u2019s a good investment.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Andrus points out that he chose wood and canvas for practical reasons. The materials were cheap. They were available. Parts were easy to rebuild in case of mistakes. And there are ships around the world proving that sail is a viable way to move cargo. Since 2006, Kwai<\/em>, a 43-meter-long sailing ship with an eight to 11-person crew and a cargo capacity of 225 tonnes, has been sailing regularly between Hawaii and the Cook Islands\u2014an almost 10,000 kilometer round trip. And TransOceanic Wind Transport is a sailing freight transport company with a growing fleet of chartered windships. One of these, a Netherlands-based 32-meter-long ship Tres Hombres<\/em>, has been sailing rum, chocolate, coffee, and other products between European markets and Brazil and the Caribbean since 2009. Another of their boats, a 35-meter-ketch, Irene of Bridgwater<\/em>, carries cargo from European ports of call to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.<\/p>\n

For Captain Michael Vahs, Ceres<\/em>\u2019s tour de force is an optimistic realism. \u201cIt\u2019s definitely the future, but I can\u2019t answer how far that future is,\u201d he says. Oil is cheap and ship operators don\u2019t pay for the use of the environment, he explains, so it\u2019s hard for wind propulsion to compete on a large scale. But one point where the experts, the skeptics, and the believers all concur is that successful wind propulsion methods will evolve from small innovative efforts into niche markets, like inter-island traffic and shipping in remote areas where fuel is expensive. But institutional help and funding can eventually lead to the adoption of wind propulsion technologies on a larger scale. And as Uttmark points out, \u201cmarine transportation becomes very compelling when you scale up.\u201d The initial investment in wind technologies may be high, but the long-term benefits will pay off in reduced fuel and environmental costs. After all, as legendary sailor, author, and photographer Alan Villiers, who documented the voyages of the world\u2019s last commercial sailing ships, noted\u2014God\u2019s good wind is free.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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