Green boating: tips for eco friendly sailing – Yachting Monthly

Eco-friendly boating. Is it a realistic possibility?

According to the RYA’s Sustainability Strategy published in June 2020, the two most significant global environmental issues of the moment are climate change plus biodiversity loss.

The report includes numerous actions that the RYA feels can be achieved cheaply and easily by boat owners and watersports participants throughout the UK in order to lessen any detrimental effects to the marine environment.

In general, sailing yachts produce a fraction of the emissions of a motorboat, however sailors of both power and sailing vessels are generally more aware of marine pollution issues than non-boat owners and can usually be trusted to do their best if presented with helpful guidance.

Hydrogen is a much cleaner fluid, but may be upstaged by electric. Credit: Alamy

Clearly, a lot of necessary behavioural changes and logistical challenges will need in order to be inspired, instigated plus possibly financed by governmental bodies such as the particular Maritime and Coastguard Agency, along with other relevant authorities such as the RYA (leisure) and British Marine (commercial).

But there are also plenty associated with simple actions us mariners and boat owners can do to assist them towards achieving their green ambitions.

Green boating: waste disposal

Some of the worst pollutants created and disposed of by boaters are sewage, oily bilge water, grey water containing cleaning products and plastic food packaging.

A little more care and investment in the particular disposal of these items will make the world of difference to the environment in which we like to sail.

Toilet waste

Pumping raw sewage into the sea has long been considered unacceptable, although particularly frowned upon mainly within rivers , marinas and anchorages rather than open tidal waters.

Nowadays, some effective method of that contains your black waste on board, such as a holding tank, really is a must.

All new boats should have holding tanks, plus old boats are encouraged to fit one. Credit: Alamy Stock Photo

Though actually only a legal requirement on new craft since 2016, it is the particular duty of any responsible sailor to equip their boat with sewage containment facilities – even small craft, where a simple portable cassette-style toilet will usually suffice.

Although there are currently large swathes of coastline without any pump-out facilities, those that do exist can be found at www.thegreenblue.org.uk .

Adjusting your cruising plans to suit might be worthwhile and should soon become as natural as stopping regarding provisions and fuel.

Continues below…

Discharging your holding tank at sea remains legal in UK waters, although you’re asked not to do it within 3 miles of the coast or near Marine Protected Areas (MPAs).

Other countries are much stricter, especially in the Mediterranean , and I fully expect the British government in order to introduce stricter regulations within the near future too.

Composting toilets are becoming more popular with inland waterway users because well, but few are compatible with the motion experienced at sea, and disposal ashore can often become more complicated than simply pumping out a holding tank.

Grey water

Similar care should also end up being taken when disposing of grey water (the kind used when having a shower or doing the washing up in the sink).

Although fitting the grey water tank may be an unnecessary faff in a small craft, it’s easy these days to ensure any cleaning and cleaning products being drained overboard are from the environmentally friendly types.

Definitely avoid any cleaning products containing chlorine, bleach, phosphates or microplastics (polyethylene).

Once again, there are already areas in the Med that will fine boat owners should any detergent bubbles be seen trailing from their boat in a harbour or anchorage.

Bilge drinking water

Particular care ought to be taken with this kind of water.

If you have an inboard marine diesel engine or petrol engine there are bound to be a few leaks or spillages into the bilge so ensure you have a deep drip tray under the engine.

Eco-friendly boating: A bilge filter will clean up bilge water being pumped overboard

Oily bilge water should either be filtered before pumping it overboard or preferably pumped into a separate tank or sealable container for disposal ashore, instead than risk it going into the surrounding sea untreated.

In the event of an emergency, emptying the particular bilges as quickly since possible is a should, although a leaking boat will be letting in clean seawater from the outside, simply recirculated by the bilge pump.

Outboards frequently pollute marinas plus harbours, either by poor refuelling methods or leaks of oil and petrol from the engine direct.

These can be overcome by refuelling ashore (if detachable or separate tank) or simply by devising a means to pump the fuel into the tank rather than pour it out associated with a fuel can.

Ensuring your inboard or outboard engine is well maintained will also help reduce fluid leakages to a bare minimum.

Food and packaging waste

One of the simplest solutions to limiting the amount of packaging you have upon board is to unpack as much as you can before you head off plus dispose of the packaging ashore, keeping the food in reusable containers or even lockers on board.

If you can’t perform that then at least remove any packing through foods before passing all of them up into the cockpit, where the wind will quickly blow empty wrappers overboard.

While most foodstuffs thrown overboard will be eaten by fish, there are some items, such as orange peel, that take the very long time in order to degrade so should be taken home and composted.

Green boating: auxiliary propulsion

Modern lithium batteries are safer and lighter than earlier alternatives

Time to ditch the smelly old diesel and turn your boat into a fully electric yacht ?

Along with motor vehicles, boats of all kinds will shortly be forced to change from using fossil-fuelled auxiliary engines to zero-emission propulsion systems this kind of as HVO (hydrotreated vegetable oil) or hydrogen Internal Combustion Engines (ICE) or electric motors.

The former is the simplest to do as most marine diesels are already able to run on HVO fuel along with little or no conversion work.

But the fuel is scarce, expensive and will not become sustainable in to the future.

Besides, any ICE still requires lubrication, which is another opportunity for pollution, and they remain noisy and smelly whatever fuel you use.

Petrol outboards will soon be outsold by electric outboards, which are proving themselves because realistic options. Credit: Paul Wyeth

Meanwhile, it is already possibly to propel a sailing yacht at half hull speed in relatively calm waters using an electric motor and a large battery bank.

Furthermore, the production of thoroughly clean electricity for use on board has been seriously aided by the ever-improving solar photovoltaic products now available to boat owners.

All electric yachts are still in the early stages of development plus currently suffer similar difficulties to those currently becoming experienced in the auto industry, mainly limited range and high initial costs.

The situation is rapidly evolving, however, as more time and effort is directed towards improving batteries, PV cells and regeneration systems.

Green boating: Carry a spill kit in case of fuel or even oil leaks. Credit: Graham Snook/Yachting Monthly

Five years from now the cost of conversion in order to electric propulsion will likely be similar, or even less than a replacement marine diesel ICE.

Solar power has come on in leaps and bounds over the particular past few years and is now significantly less expensive and more efficient, although the number of sunny days is fairly limited in UK oceans, meaning you would still need to cover almost every free flat deck surface with PV panels to survive when cruising totally off-grid.

The recent availability of low-cost li (symbol) (LiFePO4) batteries and their own inherently safer characteristics (compared to other Li-ion chemistries) has also greatly aided the introduction of the grid-free boat, although the technology is reasonably complex plus usually needs at minimum some help from a professionally qualified installer.

That said, it won’t be long prior to a genuine ‘drop-in’ lithium battery replacement will be obtainable for the DIY installer (many currently available drop-ins aren’t really that simple and can even be dangerous if incorrectly set up), which should make changing over simpler and cheaper.

Modern batteries need a carefully installed system. Credit: Rupert Holmes

One major headache for boat owners– time and money spent upon engine maintenance – need to also be considerably reduced by converting to electrical as there are so few moving parts to wear or fail.

Battery capacity and recharge/generation will obviously end up being paramount, but careful planning, good system design plus technological innovation will undoubtedly overcome most obstacles.

Apart from battery maintenance concerns, the only other foreseeable problem might be with the motor cooling system (essential for maximum efficiency), as these will certainly be subject to the same concerns that ICEs suffer, such as blockages, faulty pumps and corrosion.

Gas: cooking and heating

The risk involved in storing plus using LPG on board a boat has long been debated.

As well as the potential explosion hazard, burning gas for cooking or heating produces almost as much unwanted CO2 as running a petrol engine.

The simple answer would appear to be to convert in order to electric, but electric heating is way less effective and often totally impractical on a small boat.

Eco-friendly boating: Power generation and storage remains an issue for induction cooking upon small boats. Credit: Theo Stocker/Yachting Monthly

That said, an electric propulsion motor will need cooling with water when running, so there will be an opportunity to use that waste heat by storing it in an insulated tank, just since you can today with indirectly cooled ICEs.

Once again, as large capacity lithium-based electric battery banks and more efficient solar panels continue to become developed, more and more boat owners are finding they can just about provide enough power to operate an induction plate or microwave for short periods, without totally flattening their particular batteries or running their engines or generators.

We might not be quite there yet, but by 2050 I’m confident battery and power generation technology will have developed so much further that we’ll look back and wonder why folk actually considered carrying gas or even fuel on board.

Antifoul coatings

Most conventional, ‘off the shelf’ antifoul coatings are designed to be toxic to sea life and if you take out all the harmful VOCs, biocides and metals you’re left with, well, paint!

As a result of current efforts at cleaning up this aspect of sailing, boat owners are experiencing a gradual decrease in the effectiveness of antifoul products compared with the decade or two ago.

Already, marinas and boat yards are usually under strict rules to ensure any run-off water that might contain antifouling deposits are collected into a designated waste tank when they hose down boat hulls.

How long before boat owners are banned from scraping their own hulls or applying new antifoul on the hard? Pretty much imminent, I feel.

Antifoul run-off is usually toxic, which is why regulations are getting even stricter

Despite the admirable DIY Safe Antifouling initiative promoted simply by the British Coatings, The particular Green Blue and the particular Yacht Harbour Association (YHA), I foresee a time (quite soon) when all ‘self-eroding’ types of antifouling may be banned for the quantity of polluting copper plus zinc deposits they leach off to settle on the seabed, thereby forcing owners to have their hulls treated professionally with ‘regulated and approved’ products only.

Copper-impregnated epoxy coatings such as Coppercoat, might be acceptable for a while longer, but I confidently predict even they will end up being gone before the next decade is out, and anything containing biocides of any kind of sort will be a definite no-no.

So, what will we be left with?

Moves towards silicone-impregnated coatings that will rely on making your hull so slippery that nothing can stick in order to it, have proven slow to develop successfully and, despite being more eco-friendly, even they are struggling to comply with the strict new regulations getting constantly introduced.

They are also too expensive currently for the leisure ocean industry and not very effective on slow-moving vessels like sailing yachts.

Green boating: Silicone based antifouls might offer an alternative

More recently, polymer-based, ‘microtopology’ coatings possess been developed.

Based more around natural surface repulsion technology, they are non-toxic and are usually intended to make the surface physically untenable for crustaceans and other biofoulings.

The product is said to deliver a ‘biomimetic microtextured surface’ (knobbly or ridged to you plus me), encouraging the formation of tiny air pockets that aquatic organisms find very hard to cling onto.

A secondary benefit is that their particular superhydrophobic properties also reduce surface friction, thereby reducing the energy needed to drive the hull through the particular water.

The efficacy of these ‘nanotech’ products has yet to become proven beyond the lab but, provided they are shown to work, can be applied easily and their price is within the budget of the average leisure sailor, these might just provide a workable and biofriendly option for the future.

I suspect nevertheless, they’ll require professional application so won’t be popular with DIY leisure boaters.

There have been several brands of ultra-sonic devices marketed over the past decade and most appear to function, though with varying degrees of success.

Many have however to prove themselves effective in a wide diversity of marine environments and all require a coat or even two of hard antifouling
as well, which, within my opinion, somewhat defeats the object.

They also consume power continuously, which is a serious drawback intended for boat owners who have got a mooring without shore power and no effective photo voltaic power.

Maybe, if we’re still making brand new GRP boats in 2050, somebody will have invented a new resin impregnated with some form of marine organism repellent, or a good annual super-slippery, peel-off biodegradable film.

Alternatively we might just decide to ditch antifouling products altogether and simply rely upon lifting our boats out every month for a quick hose-down and buff up.

Useful green boating websites

RYA www.rya.org.uk

British Marine www.britishmarine.co.uk

The Green Blue www.thegreenblue.org.uk

British Coatings www.coatings.org.uk

The Yacht Harbour Association www.tyha.co.uk

Enjoyed reading Green boating: tips for eco friendly sailing?

A subscription in order to Yachting Monthly magazine costs around 40% less than the cover price .

Print plus digital editions are available through Magazines Direct – where you can also find the latest deals .

YM is packed with information to help you get the most from your time on the water.

• • • Take your own seamanship to the following level with tips, advice and skills from our experts
    • Impartial in-depth reviews associated with the latest yachts and equipment
    • Cruising guides to help you reach those dream destinations

Follow us on Facebook , Twitter and Instagram.