Founding
In December 2008, I noticed it had been three years since I started refitting our H55 Marco Polo floating project sailboat that had a bad transmission, yet there was still no propulsion. In addition to other repairs, I had spent two years trying occasionally to fix the old WWII drive system, a half year to investigate modern electric propulsion, and another half year designing the new installation and collecting parts. All enjoyable for me, but I began to fantasize about an organization that would have found me three years ago, shown me the possibilities, found comparable installations, and maybe even sweetened the deal by somehow bringing down my costs: GreenMarineRePower.
The fantasy would have stayed just that, had it not been for a growing body of research showing what common sense already knows: as a child plays, so they are later as an adult. As a child, I really enjoyed playing with boats in the 60's and beyond; "boat" was my first word. But the technology of the 60's raised me as a gross polluter; I was initially excited by the throaty power of my gross polluting sailboat engine. I prefer the world to be habitable when I leave, but my childhood learned behavior is creating pollution problems that threaten our future.
I've been trying: I drive carbon-neutral biodiesel VWs (a pickup, wagon, and Beetle) that all usually get better than 50 mpg. I built and drive an all electric car that gets the energy equivalent of 200 mpg. I reduce, reuse, recycle (I'm part Scottish). And yet it still took me two years of banging my thick head on an old dead transmission to even consider green sailing. I even had an 100hp (peak) electric motor waiting patiently in my garage for me to connect the dots. So even though I had the interest, most of the technical ability, a perfect electric motor, a sailboat needing a repower, and practice building and driving an electric vehicle, a green marine repower had not even occurred to me for two years!
I'm not normally so noticeably stupid: I was HS Valedictorian, a UC Davis graduate, and am a career Air Traffic Controller practiced in making multiple snap decisions with every breath. The bad news: I am not alone. Western children of the 1980's and earlier, hate me for being blunt, curse me for accusing you, but at least consider: we are neurologically biased to pollute, which is hazarding our grandchildren. We were raised polluting without conscience, and it is time to set a more promising course, time to stop teaching children how to pollute.
The good news: there are thousands of green marine explorers world-wide that have pioneered safe passages. They have discovered advantages surpassing their initial hopes of reliable, durable, economical propulsion systems, and GreenMarineRePower shares their stories, provides incentives for other boaters to go green, provides incentives for manufacturers to economically supply green, and thereby amplifies the growing wave of demand that will green all boats. More importantly, this process will equip children with an ecological awareness (through green water play) that will help them as adults find solutions to our current and future global water challenges, solutions that elude those of us blinded by our polluting ways.
Mark Stafford