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Subject: More head trip (plumbing issues)
From:

On 18 Nov 2004 17:58:07 GMT, (LaBomba182) wrotf:

While I'm sure you are sincere, you're thinking is classic
environmentalist/sail boater hypocrisy.

In that you think you are being environmentally superior but you seem forget
that almost everything on you boat has been made with or from polluting
products or processes.

Will your boat have teak on it? Was it farm raised? If so how much natural
vegetation was destroyed/displaced to grow it?
Will you be varnishing or oiling it?

What are you batteries made from? Environmentally friendly lead and acid?

What fuel will power your stove?

Any plastics on your boat? Aluminum? Stainless steel?
How much oil/energy was used to process/make them?

The list goes on and on.

And by the way, what will you be doing with that black and gray water on
your
boat?

Oh wait I see, you'll:

"discarge your waste few miles away from coast... where currents and
large wather masses can dilute and dissolve it."

Classic, just classic.

Do the coastal and inshore waters in your world never mix?
No tides?
Or is it just an "out of sight, out of mind" thing?

When your boat comes to the end of it's life how do you intend to recycle
it?
Or will the: "currents and large wather masses" take care of that too?

While I believe in doing all we can to keep the earth clean and I enjoy
sailing, I can't see myself sitting in my plastic hulled, teak trimmed sail
boat with toxic bottom paint on it reading by my lead/acid battery or genset
powered light, while perhaps my Freon based aircon/ fridge units are keeping
things cool, feeling all superior to next guy down the mooring field in his
stink pot.

God I
love a
good rant, Capt. Bill

So I guess everything from the hand of humanity is evil. If so,
please do the world a favor and promptly dispose of yourself in an
enviromentally friendly fashion.

The reality is that feces and urine are perfectly natural substances
and the most natural thing to do with them is to return them to the
environment where their constituents can be recycled by the sea or
earth. Dumping oily bilge water is indeed another thing entirely.
Yes, there are many things on a boat made by human ingenuity and
sometimes there are consequences to using them but in the end
everything is a compromise and finding the best ones out there is the
best we can do.

If one adapts a chicken little attitude that everything is bad and the
sky is falling one ends up doing nothing at all which does not
contribute to the world either. Best bet is to live as best you can.
Yes, sailing gently on the waters is best, doing as little to pollute
as possible, but worrying about something as natural as feces and
urine is silly in the long run. Considering the millions of tons that
sea creatures add to the waters, the little bit that comes from human
vessel discharge is indeed miniscule and there is no indication that
human feces are in any way more toxic or less natural than those of
our finned kin.

I sail gently because it is practical and right, but discharging
gray/black water, even if done close to shore, is not going to cause
an ecological catastrophe. Indeed, discharge from either lectrasan
or chlorinator heads is much cleaner than that of sea animals.

We seem to be in total agreement.

Capt. Bill

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