I recently came across the idea of seasteading reading a
blog. The core of the concept is that, like
homesteading, you are living at a kind of frontier, a place beyond, essentially
unpopulated, and you are making your own world, your own reality. Well, yes, there are elements of this that I
imagine hit home to every cruising sailor, perhaps the idea of self-reliance
when sailing on long passages, the self-sufficiency required for anchoring in remote parts for a week or two, or the high degree of
autonomy that voyaging on your own boat has always offered. But let’s not get carried away : we modern
sea gypsies are nothing like the pioneers on land or the cruising pioneers of a
century ago – with a few notable exceptions, most of us are doing something closer to dude-ranching. Nothing wrong with that.
In looking for more information about seasteading I came
across several books on Amazon, and an issue of Survivalist magazine dedicated to
seasteading. Now, from my earlier
experience with survivalists in Alma, while they are generally a little “special”, the
truth is that they are out there living a life that is a whole lot simpler and
more self reliant than the life most of us live. I thought there should be something to learn
from their experiences relevant to living on a sailboat.
So ahead I went and bought the magazine issue for Kindle. I expected some perspectives that were different to the
usual yachtie writings. Did that turn
out to be true!
From the start, one has to admire the ambition of the survivalist
writers. Not limiting themselves to
sailboats or power boats, one chapter addresses those who are “financially
fortunate enough to consider purchasing a decommissioned nuclear-powered
submarine”.If that proves beyond your means another chapter helpfully details methods for “borrowing a boat, even without the intent of returning it”.
Somewhere between these two extremes, the three page chapter entitled “Building your own boat 101”, after thoughtfully providing would-be seasteaders with definitions for key terms like deck, hull and keel, concludes that “building a boat as a DIY project can be a fun and exciting experience. Individuals should have some working knowledge of wood and how to safely and effectively handle tools and equipment.” Sound advice, that.
There’s an implicit assumption that while the government might attack them in a multitude of insidious ways, it would always leave their diesel supplies intact, so there's not much support for sailing. “Sailing a boat is by far the hardest method of traveling over water. The techniques and procedures are much more complex than using boats powered by inboard or outboard motors.” This is caused in part, one assumes, by “the color of a sail having no bearing on its performance, name or position on the vessel.” Furthermore, “sailing is slowly becoming a lost art, with fewer and fewer people appreciating the time and talent it takes to use skills combined with nature, to navigate across the water. It is considered by many to be a more hazardous form of boating, and there are certain risks present on sailboats that are not present on others, such as shifting sails and yardarms, as well as riding the vessel while it is listing to one side or the other, which poses a greater risk of someone being swept overboard.”
Abandon ship options are explored. Along with lifeboats which “someone should be in charge of deploying”, “non-traditional lifeboat options” such as “Personal Diver Propulsion Systems” are explored for those who enjoy hanging out on their boat in full scuba gear, and jet skis for those who conveniently plan to abandon ship near shore in calm conditions.
Seasteading improperly in Sal, Cape Verdes, without the essential torpedoes and explosive harpoons |
I would have expected foraging and water purification to be strong points of the survivalists, and there is plenty about harvesting seaweed, as well as advice on not getting eaten by a shark or stung by a jellyfish while spearing fish. As for producing drinking water from sea water, the survivalists eschew the modern namby-pamby reverse osmosis stuff and instead work with more robust techniques:
“In the summer, you can make a
solar still that will produce drinking water from salt water by linking two
bottles together with rubber or plastic tubing. Used plastic soda bottles work
well. Use your knife to make a hole in the center of each bottle’s cap, and
then force the tubing through each hole. The tubing may be sealed into the
holes with duct tape, chewing gum, or tree sap. If you’ve made the holes
skillfully enough, you may not need to seal the tubing to the caps. To distill
drinking water, fill one bottle three-quarters full with salt water and screw
the bottle cap onto the bottle. Leave the other bottle empty and screw its cap
on as well. Heat the bottle with salt water by putting it in direct sunlight,
and cool the empty bottle by leaving it in shade or weighing it down in a tidal
pool. As the salt water in the bottle heats up it will begin to evaporate, and
the salt and ocean minerals will be left in the bottle. The steam or evaporated
water from the salt water bottle will travel through the tubing to the other
bottle where it will cool and condense. This condensation will be pure, fresh
drinking water. Fill your canteen with this water as it is collected.”
On the basis that I’d like to drink more than a thimbleful
of water a day I’m sticking with Otra Vida’s small watermaker for now. Perhaps the process with the bottles works
better on a nuclear submarine.
Another guilty pleasure on Sunday mornings long ago in the
US was watching TV evangelists and laughing crazily. The first Sunday after I moved to Houston in
1991 included seeing Robert Tilton, a Dallas based preacher, place his open
hand in front of the camera and tell his flock to put their hand on their TV
screens and “feel the power”. This was
around the time that Genesis had released “Jesus He Knows Me”, and I assumed the
TV show was a parody - until it became clear that it wasn’t. (Presumably in recent years Tilton’s income has
been dented by the spread of flat screen TVs without anything like as much
static electricity).
In the same vein, I really want to believe this Survivalist
guide to seasteading is a parody.
But it isn’t.
Oh dear. Oh dear.
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