The Women and Cruising Blog » Ecology

What to do with all that trash?

Devi Sharp — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 23:51:58 +0000

Imagine this…You are one week out on a three week trip and you realize that funky odor is coming from your trash and there is no place to toss the bag and get it off the boat.

Okay, I might be a bit obsessive about my trash and I admit it, but I come by it honestly.

We have taken three trips, each three weeks in length up the Rio Macareo, one of the outflow rivers of the Orinoco. We have also spent a month in the Venezuelan out islands, Las Tortugas, Los Roques and Las Aves without a place to get rid of our trash.

If I know that we will be without a trash deposit facility for more than a few days I start sorting and managing the trash.

Sorting the trash

In the Rio Macareo there was no trash deposit facility.

Organic trash is all food waste and it gets deposited into a closed container. I use a 5-liter Rubbermaid container. The lid fits tightly and the walls of the container are straight, so it is an easy container to rinse.

Burnable trash, such as paper towels, toilet paper and any paper wrapping get segregated into a separate container. Since this will have to get burned I try not to put wet paper in the burnables and will even try to dry paper towels. This should be mostly dry and non-smelly. I keep the toilet paper in a separate bag and do not open that until the flames are hot.

Non-burnable trash will be all the plastic, glass bottles, cans and other food wrappers.

How we get rid of our trash

I keep my organic trash until I can toss it overboard in deep water or where it will not wash up on a beach or in view of someone. The Macareo River is a large volume river and a bit of food trash will not disturb the ecology of the river, but I did not want to be seen tossing trash in the river so I waited until dark to toss the trash. If we are at anchor every few days we take a dinghy trip outside the island water flow to toss the organic at sea.

The burnable trash can be burned when you have a beach or shore nearby.

Trash burning up the Macareo was a buggy affair. (Photo by Chuck Shipley)

Getting the “burnable trash” to burn can be quite difficult.

Toilet paper does not burn well even before it is used – enough said on that.

We start a small fire with local wood and wait until it is a burning well before adding any of our trash.

My husband, Hunter, uses an accelerator fluid of approximately one part gas to five parts diesel. He mixes about a cup and we wet down the fuel before we light it. It is not safe to add the accelerator after there is fire.

If that makes you uncomfortable bring some dry newspaper and collect plenty of kindling and make a good fire before adding the trash.

Make sure you get all the stuff burned and put the fire out.

Trash burning up the Macareo was a buggy affair. On wet season trips we wore long pants, long sleeves and head nets.

The non-burnables are the most troublesome.

Drying trash

This is where I get a little obsessive. This is where you have to be meticulous.

You need to wash and dry everything before you toss it into the non-burnable bag. It will only take a few days for the tuna can to stink and then you have its company for the rest of the trip. That means plastic food containers, ziplocks that held food and even the tetra pack that held your milk.

You can use seawater for washing and then dry the trash (now, doesn’t that sound stupid?) and even after weeks at sea your trash should not be stinky.

If you are at sea or will be making passages in deep water you can sort out your bottles, cans and paper for deposit in Davey Jones’ locker, but make sure there is no plastic. The paper will float for a while, but soon will sink and disintegrate.

Here is the rule – no plastic in the sea.

About Devi Sharp

I come by my trash fetish honestly – In my misspent youth I was a river guide on the Rio Grande for week-long trips, and more recently Hunter and I have taken many long canoe and kayak trips in the Alaskan Wilderness.

On all of these trips we had to manage our trash and in Alaska the trash had to be non-smelly and bear-proof. On the Grand Canyon kayak trips we had to pack out all trash (including the porta potty).

When I am not managing trash I hike on the islands, teach yoga, watch birds, write and chase green flashes.

We have been living aboard our Island Packet 45, Arctic Tern, since December 2005 and never looked back.

More information (external links)

Recent articles by Devi Sharp in All at Sea
Devi’s blog: Artic Tern

How do you handle your trash when you are sailing in remote areas without disposal facilities?

Let us know.

Email kathy@forcruisers.com or leave a comment below.

Katharine Lowrie sets sail to protect wildlife

Katharine Lowrie — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 02:06:06 +0000

If by chance you are in Grenada as you read this, you can meet Kath and attend a presentation on Kath and David’s seabird survey on December 2. Details below.

Land Meets Sea

I’m not sure that my experience of cruising is altogether normal… I dumped my maiden name, Land and its beguiling earthly forms, abandoned my job surveying wildlife and plunged into an alien world of motion and water.

David and I bowled off from the shores of Devon, England, in our ancient sailing boat who, in her heyday, had been much more contented transporting a couple of tonnes of fish about than two fresh-faced explorers and their fellow friends.

The thing was that we wanted to work overseas in ecology.

Lista Light, our 75 year old, wooden sailing boat, seemed the perfect carbon neutral mode to transport us on our way.

So we filled her fishy voids with oranges and lemons, strapped a rowing machine to her cabin top with ideas of harnessing our energy and keeping fit, procured Ampair’s wind turbine-come wake turbine, added to our clutch of solar panels and surged off.

Surge was one way of putting it! On our first outing from her sleepy resting place in the Bristol canal, on a freezing spring day, we ran into gale force 9 winds and tore Lista’s head and main sail. I was sick as a dog, lying prostrate on the pilot berth being occasionally fed marmite and cheese sandwiches. “Baptism in freezing cold waves and wind” came to mind, but Lista was staunch, she just rocked her ample hips from side to side and I felt cocooned in her great wooden frame.

So we gradually made our way south accompanied by rafts of puffins and guillemots and pods of leaping dolphins and of course night sails.

I shall never forget the first time I sat up on deck under an hallow of stars manning the helm alone,

with the wind nudging Lista’s beam and the waves rushing past. It was the most magical experience, to feel natural forces lift us up and push us forward effortlessly.

Then, of course, reality would hit, on this instance after a dreamy crossing of the Biscay, replete with a pair of the world’s second largest whales, fin whales, who sidled close by our side, which I had to restrain myself from joining. As we neared the safety of Spanish shores, we found ourselves skewered down on all sides by lightning and thunder. This was followed swiftly by our finding ourselves in a two-way motorway of tankers, emerging out of rain clusters on the radar screen, metres from our bow.

But the point of sailing is the adventure, the uncertainty as to what lies over the next frothing wave.

If you yearn for wildlife as I do, then it supplies encounters with the oddest of creatures from a minke whale that swam at our side for over five days, to the sparkling phosphorescence that shoots from our wake or to my first scaly sight of a flying fish, hurtling into my eye at night!

We were aiming for South America, but ended up in the Caribbean working with a nature conservation charity…

…Environmental Protection In the Caribbean (EPIC). Now, as a friend has pointed out, we are making a survey of the worst anchorages of the Caribbean as we research seabirds in their wave-battered homes far from people and their predators.

By October 2010 we intend to have produced the first comprehensive breeding seabird atlas of the Lesser Antilles.

Without a seabird census, governments cannot predict how their numbers are doing and put in place the necessary conservation measures.

Seabirds indicate the health of our oceans, they direct fishermen to shoals and remove the weak and diseased fish from the food chain. They are at every level of the food web, balancing and checking the marine world. They are inextricably linked to sailing folklore, guiding sailors to land… so they’re not just pretty to look at.

And so we find ourselves repairing Lista Light’s aching bones in Grenada and seeking a grant to fund a small motorized tender that will allow us to reach the seabird islands in greater safety than last year.

Because, manoeuvring our 35 tonne boat within metres of unchartered coastlines and anchoring by wind-torn islands produced: one grounding, a windlass torn from the deck, two surveyors fighting dangerous currents and countless other near misses… so the hunt is on!

It is nearly a year and half since David and I left the UK and I started sailing.

Sailing has unlocked a world of beauty, of wildlife, exotic shores and velvet nights.

We have experienced nature in calm and rage, without a whiff of jet lag or the misery of long airport queues. We have nosed into sleepy coves alone and carried our world of books and pointless frippery along.

Sailing allows us a portal into sustainability

with solar, wind or wake energy powering our needs, local fruit and veg filling the holds, rain water harvested and organic waste fed to the fish.

There is more on the list, such as installing a holding tank, because the longer I spend in this watery world we all inhabit, the more I need to have as little impact upon it as possible. Long may the lobsters stare at us from their dark coral home and the mangrove roots march seaward.

Want to learn more?

Seabird Presentation in Grenada - December 2, 2009:

Katharine and David will be giving a free presentation on seabirds – including their findings from the first comprehensive seabird survey of the Lesser Antilles to date.

The talk and slide show will also include why seabirds are important, their ecology, a bit of id and a short video on the project.

Location: Le Phare Bleu, near Petit Calivigny, South Grenada: contact@lepharebleu.com (+1 473) 444 2400 www.lepharebleu.com

Date/time: Wednesday 2 December 2009, 4.30pm at the pool-side bar.

Le Phare Bleu should be organising transport from Grenada Yacht Club, etc. Please contact them for information.

The talk should only last an hour, including questions. Le Phare Bleu has a Friendship Season with special dining offers on the night if you are interested. So if you would like to find out more about seabirds in the Caribbean please do come along.

Help Katharine and David fund their small survey tender

If you have any ideas of how Katharine and David might fund a small (~ 14 foot) survey boat, please contact Katharine at landy@listalight.co.uk.

Visit Katharine and David’s website

… for the dates of their 2010 presentations on the EPIC project and seabird ecology on various islands in the Lesser Antilles as they survey northwards in 2010: www.listalight.co.uk

… for more information on the EPIC Seabird Survey that they are working on: http://www.listalight.co.uk/webpages/EPICProjectSummary.htm

… to learn more about the Lesser Antilles Seabird Species: http://www.listalight.co.uk/webpages/seabirdspecies.htm

Submit YOUR own bird records

Central data base for the conservation of birds, where you can submit your bird records: www.worldbirds.org

Watch Kath’s YouTube video

- Read how other women Take Their Passion Cruising:

Lydia Fell falls in love with the wild horses of Abaco
Take Your Passion Cruising: Birdwatching
Taking Passions Cruising (Admiral’s Angle column #41)

- Old Sailboat given New Life ~ Lista Light on a Mission to Protect Seabirds (from the Daily Herald website – St Marteen)

What’s YOUR passion? Have you taken it cruising?
Let us know. Email kathy@forcruisers.com or leave a comment below.