Sailing
Through a Meltwater Pulse
By Dmitry Orlov
January 19, 2016 -
"Club
Orlov" -
It's
January, and the Greenland ice sheet is melting.
There was recently a winter hurricane in the North
Atlantic, and another in the Pacific. On New Year's
day there was a thaw at the North Pole. Greenand is
melting; when it melts, the ocean level will go up
20 feet (6m). This will be enough to flood all the
coastal cities—permanently. So far, predictions as
to how fast this melting will occur have proven to
be worthless, with the actual melting rate outpacing
them by a huge margin. And although many people
still believe that the effect will be gradual—less
than an inch a year—another view on the matter is
that at some point there will be an avalanche-like
collapse of the Greenalnd ice sheet, which will
generate a meltwater pulse, sending ocean levels up
many feet in a single step.
And there are all those who, whenever I publish
something that mentions climate change, crawl out of
the woodwork and gnash their exoskeletal mandibles
at me, to the effect that climate=weather, and it's
all a conspiracy theory. They are all idiots and
deserve a boathook in the eye. Sailing on...
For the sake of this discussion, I will assume a
meltwater pulse of 10 feet (3m). What will it mean
for those of us who live on the water and sail along
the coastline? And, more specifically, what will be
the impacts for the sailboat design I have been
working on for about a year now—QUIDNON, the
houseboat that sails?
Ignoring, for the moment, other impacts, most
shoreline marine facilities—marinas, boatyards, fuel
docks—were constructed to be a few feet above the
highest high tide. In many cases, they now have less
than a foot of freeboard at highest high tide, and
given a bit of a storm surge that number becomes
negative, and the ramps that lead down to the
floating docks stick up at a jaunty angle. A 10-foot
rise will put virtually all of these facilities
under a few feet of water at high tide, rendering
them inoperable. With the transformers under water,
they will be unable to provide electricity.
Travelifts—the cranes that lift boats out of the
water for maintenance—will be rendered inoperative,
and so there will be no more haulouts.
But the worst part of it will be that entire
marinas, which consist of an interconected structure
of floating docks that float up and down on pilings
with the tide, will lift off the pilings and drift
off. The entire raft of docks and boats will drift
until something runs aground. Then, when the tide
ebbs, leaving the entire tangled mess high and dry,
the powerboats will settle on their propellers,
bending the drive shafts, while the
sailboats—virtually all of them keelboats—will fall
over, tangling their rigging together and becoming
dismasted. A few tide cycles and a stiff blow later,
and an entire marina's worth of boats will turn into
an unsalvageable tangled pile of wreckage. For
marinas in zones without much tidal range (a few
spots on the Intracoastal Waterway in the US, all
Bahamas) that use fixed docks instead of floating
ones, the problem will be about the same: as the
meltwater pulse arrives, the boats will individually
lift off pilings and sail off in random directions
in a tangled mass.
So much for marinas; but what of anchorages. After
all, a few of us will have the foresight to get out
of the marina and anchor somewhere. If you find an
isolated anchorage in which to ride out the
meltwater pulse, you might do fine, but in a
crowded, shallow anchorage, where most boats have
just a few feet under them at low tide, a 10-foot
water level rise will cause them to run out of scope
(the ratio between anchor chain length and depth).
Anything less than 4:1 scope is unlikely to allow
the anchor to hold a boat in place. They will drag
anchor and end up littering the new coastline, which
will run thorugh shopping mall parking lots,
suburban subdivisions and historic waterfronts.
Most reasonable people would consider such a
scenario, and conclude that when (note: not if
but when) it happens, living aboard boats
will become impossible, along with recreational
boating if the boat is stored in the water. It might
still be able to launch boats from trailers, at low
tide, from the very top of some boat ramps. Kayaks,
canoes, dinghies and rowboats could still be used.
But without shore water, shore power, pumpout
services for sewage, floating docks to tie up to and
ramps leading to dry land, living aboard a boat will
be almost impossible for most people.
Without functioning boatyards with travelifts it
will no longer be able to maintain boats, which all
need to have their bottoms painted and through-hulls
maintained (that's a technical term for holes in the
bottom of a boat, masking the fact that they are a
bad idea). People who live aboard boats and drive to
work will find it difficult to do so if the marina
parking lot ends up under several feet of water
twice in each 24-hour period.
But suppose you are an intrepid sort of sailor who
doesn't mind living at anchor in the midst of a
postapocalyptic landscape, fetching your water and
fuel in jerricans by dinghy and pushcart from some
place further inland? (I assume that the boat is a
sailboat, because, with fuel docks underwater, there
weren't be any reasonable way to keep a powerboat
fueled.) What if you get around the lack of boatyard
facilities by careening the boat? Well, then there
are still some additional issues.
1. With all the jetsam and flotsam getting washed
off what used to be dry land—cars, trucks, houses
and so on—sailing around and anchoring will be
rather difficult. When anchoring, it is useful to
look at a chart, and see whether the holding ground
in an anchorage is marked “sand” or “mud” or “hard.”
But what if the spot where you want to drop the hook
is full of mangled wreckage? Will the anchor hold,
and will you be able to get it back out?
2. There are many fixed bridges which, in the US,
along the Intracoastal Waterway, have 65 feet of
vertical clearance. After a 10-foot meltwater pulse,
that becomes a 55-foot clearance, which will not be
enough for any sailboat over about 34 feet that
can't drop its mast to pass under during high tide.
And then there are all the bridges that
open—bascule, swing and lift—and wouldn't it be nice
if the bridge tenders left them with the bascules
up, the swing span open and the lift span up before
permanently abandoning their posts, but what are the
chances? And so, depending on where along the coast
you find yourself when the meltwater pulse arrives,
and with no boatyard crane available to pull your
mast, you may be stuck, with no way to make it out
to deep water.
3. In addition to significantly higher ocean water
levels due to the meltwater pulse, we are also
likely to face many more hurricanes. Currently,
there are three tactics for dealing with hurricanes
on a boat: emergency haul-out (not possible with the
travelifts not running and the boatyards flooded);
finding a hurricane hole (good luck with that, now
that they are all full of debris, making anchoring
an uncertain business); and, for the ridiculously
intrepid and annoyingly ultra-competent, taking off
to sea (on this, see previous point).
But what if the boat you live on happens to be a
QUIDNON?
-
QUIDNON is designed to run aground safely. It
only draws a couple of feet, and its bottom is
clad in roofing copper—a tough material that
also resists marine growth, only requiring a
periodic light scrubbing and brushing.
- With
its bottom flat, it settles upright and can
safely dry out at low tide. If it drifts into a
parking lot or a suburban subdivision, there it
will remain until the water comes back, and then
sail back into deeper water.
- The
lack of shoreline facilities don't affect it
much: its bottom never needs to be painted
because the copper cladding is designed to
outlast the 30 years that is the design service
life of a typical QUIDNON, and there are exactly
zero underwater through-hulls to maintain, all
of its water inlets and outlets consisting of
siphon tubes that reach down into the engine
well from above the waterline.
- Lack
of shore power is not a big problem for a
QUIDNON, there being plenty of solar panels, a
wind generator and room for a generator set on
deck. There is even room for a high-temperature
plastics burner, a biochar kiln, and a digester
for biodegradable jetsam and flotsam.
- Lack
of access to fuel docks is not a big problem.
QUIDNON's inboard-outboard, which lives in the
engine well and can double as the dinghy motor,
is used to maneuver and motor through calms, but
most of the time it's possible to sail. QUIDNON
is overcanvassed by most standards, and can move
in the faintest zephyr. Thanks to the junk rig,
it can even sail backwards, with the sails
backed.
- Lack
of shore water is not a big problem, there being
lots of area from which to collect rainwater,
and huge tanks in which to store it over long
dry spells.
- The
jetsam and flotsam clogging up the anchorages
and the waterways may be problematic, but with
just a 2-foot draft it should be possible to
either see through or otherwise read the water
to figure out what the bottom is. The plan can
be to always dry out at dry tide, anchoring is a
matter of finding a spot that has 3 feet above
level ground at high tide, and putting down some
stakes. The stakes are long steel pipes, with a
pointed, conical plug at one end and a ring to
tie a rope to on the other. Each of these goes
through two holes, one through a fold-out hoop
at deck-level, and one in the chine runners that
protrude from the bottom on both sides. Once
hammered in place, they effectively pin the boat
in place, which then floats up and down when the
tide picks it up.
- If the
need arises to pass under bridges that either
don't open or are fixed and now too low, the
solution is simple: drop the masts. On QUIDNON,
this operation doesn't require a crane, and can
be performed with the boat in the water, by just
one person, using a come-along.
- Lack
of shoreside transportation with which to get to
a job shouldn't be a problem either. With all
this wreckage lying around, and many formerly
prosperous coastal areas now unreachable by land
and, for most people, by water either, there
will be plenty of new opportunities in the
salvage business.
- If a
hurricane hits, a QUIDON can be kept secure by
running it aground at high tide and running
lines out to pegs in multiple directions. No
hurricane hole is needed; just a sheltered spot
with a gently sloping shore.
In all,
when the meltwater pulse arrives, it seems to me
that, should you decide to stick around anywhere
near the former coastline, your choices are 1. to
get yourself a QUIDNON, or 2. abandon ship and flee
to higher ground, and try to get by tied up
alongside all the other miserable environmental
refugees. I believe I have done my homework, and I
think I know which choice I would prefer. Only two
questions remain: Do I have enough money? and Do I
have enough time? If you are interested in
inhabiting the shoreline moving forward, please
pitch in any way you can. Thank you.
Dmitry
Orlov
was born in Leningrad and immigrated to the United
States in the 1970’s. He is the author of
Reinventing Collapse, Hold Your Applause! and
Absolutely Positive, and publishes weekly at the
phenomenally popular blog
www.ClubOrlov.com
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