It’s surprisingly hard to make a boat go slower than the wind wants. But today we averaged about 4.5knots without much sail up at all. So we are on schedule for a dawn arrival on the island of Fatu Hiva, in the Marquesas. Touch wood.
Today was a day of finishing things.
Everyone landed a hand to Mia in an attempt to get the boat bunting project completed, even Jon got his hands busy by braiding the twine into the rope required for the job. The last egg was used by Tina to make wonderful pancakes for lunch. The last ‘noon sight’ was marked on the chart we have stuck up on the wall, as we track our progress across the Pacific. The last of the Star Wars movies ‘The Last Jedi’ was watched completing Tina’s introduction to the Star Wars series. And we begin the last of the night watches for a while. So it goes.
We also took stock of all our trash from the last 28 days. When we crossed the Atlantic it took 14 days (from Cape Verde to Barbados) and we had only one extra adult onboard. But we produced around 3 largish black trash bags of landfill for the Barbados government to deal with. So we were understandably concerned about the amount of trash we’d produce crossing the Pacific, and the immediate problem of where to store it on the boat until we get there. We simply don’t have space for 6 large trash sacks.
The solution came from a friend’s blog, sailingtotem.com – they recommended that all plastic be stuffed into empty 5L water bottles. So right before we left Tina sweet talked a Swedish super yacht to give us a few bottles from their trash. You’d think it wouldn’t make much difference, but you’d be wrong. The photo attached to this blog shows 28 days of trash, everything that isn’t biodegradable, in two 5L jugs. One of those 5L jugs lasts us two weeks worth of plastic, or about 6 regular sized kitchen trash bags of uncompressed plastic wrappers.
The stuff that is in the purple bag is anything that isn’t biodegradable and is too big to fit through the neck of the bottle, it is mostly tetra-pack UHT milk cartons and plastic pots from yoghurt.
So what, if anything do we throw it the sea? Well the depends a little bit on where we are going to make landfall and how long we’re going to be offshore. For example, if we know there is recycling at the end of the journey then we’ll wash and keep tins and glass for recycling. Sometimes we even store paper and card for recycling.
For the Pacific, we’re not going to be anywhere with a recycling centre until we reach New Zealand (could be wrong about this). But it’s a fair bet that all trash in French Polynesia either gets burned or landfilled. So for this crossing we threw the following into the sea: food waste, paper, card, glass, tins and cans. These items will all biodegrade over time, with the tins, cans and glass sinking to the ocean floor to erode or rust.
/contentious option of Jon alone
It’s not ideal, but then waste management outside of the developed world is rarely ideal. There is a very good chance that all the plastic we bring to French Polynesia will just be burned in low temperature fires which is about the worst thing you can do with it for the macro-environment. I fact you could make an argument we’d be better sending the plastic trash to the ocean floor than putting it into a trash can in Fatu Hiva. /end of contentious option of Jon
Anyway.
The full moon has just risen over the horizon, the wind is warm and steady, the seas are long and following and the sky is full of stars. Hopefully a good night ahead. We’ll sent a quick update when we’re safely anchored. Not sure if we’ll have any real internet on our cell phones, but at the very least we’ll make a quick blog post.
