With The Grace of the Sea

A Sea Change – dan

Tuesday we worked all day on Gypsy. We managed to finish the rain catchment system, re-route the egress hose for the backup electric bilge pump and check on the security grates at Mystic Stainless (not started yet, didn’t realize that it was “this” November that we were leaving). I dropped our dingy storage cover off at the canvas worker’s to have it covered in Sunbrella fabric. Our dinghy is an Avon 310 Rib Light. We love the dinghy but the cover is disintegrating from sunlight, which is disappointing given that it’s less that a year old.

Jack and Marcia from Right’s of Man stopped over for a visit. They’re planning on leaving the same time as us for Bermuda. The excitement built as the talk quickly tuned from boat projects to trip planning, departure dates and weather windows. As we were discussing weather forecasting Jack got up to help dock a 50’ catamaran that had just pulled in. Craig, the owner and charter captain of that cat had just finished the trip up from the Bahamas and joined our conversation offering PassageWeather.com as one of the man resources that he uses for passage weather planning.

Susan and I then headed back to New Haven to attend a showing of the documentary “A Sea Change” at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. It’s a beautiful and amazing film that does a great job of showing the affects of ocean acidification in human terms. It’s was a privilege and a delight to have the film and the talk afterward moderated by film’s director, Barbara Ettinger and the originator-narrator, Sven Huseby. Sven seems like a great guy in a peaceful-steady-noncomplacent-persistent kind of way. The kind of guy who can spark some of the change needed to save this planet of ours.

So what’s the big deal about ocean acidification? Simply put it’s the process in which the ocean absorbs CO2 (a by-product of burning fossil fuels), which in turn increases the ocean’s acidity. Increased acidity and the swift rate with which it’s happening is rapidly making the oceans intolerable to the creatures at the bottom of the food chain. Pull that foundation layer out and the whole Jinga tower collapses. “Imagine a world without fish.” is one of the more memorable lines of the documentary.

So what to do about this problem? Turns out the solution is simple; stop burning fossil fuels and switch to solar, wind, geothermal and other forms of clean energy which should be a no-brainer because we’re going to run out of coal, oil & gas eventually. The tricky part is that if we wait until we run out of fossil fuels we’ll probably trash out the oceans, which unfortunately will take millions of years to recover from.

If you’re interested in catching it on TV, the film will be shown on The Planet Green Network at 8:00pm Sept 26.

I’m typing this as we’re headed down to Newark International to pick up Susan’s daughter who’s flying in from Seattle; she arrives at 11:15pm making this a very full day for us.

46 days...