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– How my hindsight is 2020
Those who are not sailors may not recognize how innovations in that sport helped propel the mass migration more rapidly from the land to the sea in the 2030’s. That population relief eased many pressures on Earth ecosystems and helped the global trade culture switch from pillaging the ocean to cultivating it for the first time in 6,000 years of conquests.
This is why I thought a review of sailboat racing and my involvements would be interesting for readers now. I’d also like to think my work with the Institute for the Study of Consciousness and the book: Emerging World contributed to the general paradigm shift from faith in randomness as the origin of species to a recognition of teleology and how life is continually intent on re-designing of itself. Clearly many contributors were needed to change that self-defeating ideation in past paradigm assumptions. Systems thinking had to replace the focus on isolated individuals, as there really aren’t such separate things in the universe. That tired old meme:
“Survival of the fittest” was replaced by
“Thrival of the fittingest” and recognition of the paramount importance of symbiosis.
That century of self aggrandizement was nonetheless a needed stage of development to learn from. Wisdom for powerful collaborations emerges when each contributor feels secure in their unique gifts. Integrating suppressed internal faculties of intuition and compassion seems to be naturally concurrent with the wider social release from suppressed love relationship styles and gender rigidity.
I was not much into sports or sailboat racing myself, but I can understand why that challenge to get the most out of available wind energy was part of the mindset needed to make a technological transition from consumption to conservation. Sailing was always a prestige activity, so there was also plenty of money invested rapidly.
To give more context on future visionaries of the time, there was a brilliantly predictive old TV show released in 1990 by James Burke. “After The Warming” was set as if looking back from our time in 2050. It showed some very realistic mass relocations and refugees of climate chaos. What it missed about predicting our current success is the opportunity for fun migrations onto newly created habitats, expanding carrying capacity where the earth has never supported much life: Vast deep water tropical oceans.
Another visionary, Marshall Savage recognized the kelp growing opportunity and published a book about space migration in 1992. His scenario started with growing symbiotic life support pods on oceans instead of attempting escape from a depleted Earth to outer space. Only by myriad experiments in self-contained life support systems where mistakes are not so deadly, will we learn to be an agent of Earth giving birth to independent worlds under this sun.
Growing kelp in places it had not been before was fully proven in the early 2000s by the Climate Foundation, and other 3D ocean farmers.
The Seasteading seeds had been sown in my mind, but I did not get involved until 2020. In hindsight, my attending a renegade festival called Ephemerisle during that first pandemic quarantine shutdown year, was the empowering adventure which set my new course for Eco Villaging. I sailed there on my 16-foot trimaran and maintained the recommended 6-ft distance to others in the open air. The boat was five separate loads I could carry and reassemble by myself. That experience reinforced the value of light construction for habitats and versatility of relatively self-sufficient boats for navigating any pandemic or broken supply chains. My anticipation of a more deadly pandemic was widely predicted. Thus many were somewhat ready when it happened. That accelerated ocean migration suddenly.
I had advised friends to sell their real estate because it would start to go down in price and stay down when enough people saw the low power, low cost luxurious lifestyles in ecological tropical boats. Only a few heeded my warning; when the big pandemic hit, it was too late to cash out. Real estate took years before starting to climb again in some places, but may never return to the high valuations of the early 2030’s.
In 2021 my urge was to try a larger yet trailerable sailboat. It cost much less than just transporting my 33-ft offshore ketch. A 24ft. monohull CAN be outfitted stoutly for ocean travel. However, after living on that Bay boat for just a few weeks, I knew I needed more room for continual dwelling, especially headroom! Long-term sailing cruisers of the time generally owned catamarans with lots of space and wind drag, or trimarans if they wanted better sailing performance. All were vulnerable to cracking up with age because waves continually torque on the structure. A veteran blue water sailor advised me not to get one, especially not a used one for that reason. Quadmarans with articulating, wave power absorbing hulls were unheard of.
Now sailplanes on hydrofoil tethers are the fastest ocean racing sailboats, but at the time an engineer and I built the first quadmaran, trimarans with hydrofoils were the top ocean racers. Before that, windsurfers held the world sailing speed records, but surfboards are too small to live on and could not have the sail be controlled by autopilot to cross oceans. The next speed record holder (unsurpassed for many years) was the first to use wing lift with the horizontal superstructure as an airfoil. It takes advantage of the surface effect, an air cushion on which pelicans coast.
These features informed my design for a light, strong, comfortable and fast cruising home. Essentially it became the “covered wagon” of ocean pioneers. Others took it in the racing direction again. The signature motif of separately turnable hulls proved very versatile as a work platform or a people mover, or a single home, or a tug boat in a flock of homes pulling kelp gardens together.
Having a vertical wing sail as a cabin is not the absolute fastest racing design, but if you want to be comfortable living in it, this is the efficient choice. You can outrun a hurricane too, because it is strong enough to take high winds and just go faster. (Down wind) Kite sails add as much power as desired in light airs. Long ocean wave surfing is enabled as well. That feature of lifeboat durability was severely tested and is ironically why the world sailing speed record keeping was terminated; record seekers would take foolish risks flirting with hurricanes to clock a higher speed. Their tragic antics were nonetheless useful in further refining robust sail craft.
Back in the mid 2020s, we raced our small prototypes against each other in the surf break to refine our designs for rough conditions. By 2029 there was a proliferation of quadmaran types built by and for avid sea homesteaders all over the globe.
My focus shifted to enforcement of values. Every boat using the patented features had to have fully self-sufficient systems with water makers, waste treatment and spirulina growing tubes as standard equipment on all production vessels.
I didn’t want the new migrants to be spreading microbes around the globe. Too many past migrants have infected places unconsciously. Breaking down environmental barriers has spread disease and driven extinctions more than most people realize. Turds are not discharged into the ocean; wastes are steam sterilized and utilized for food production on board. With this lifestyle, attitudes have grown for conserving and valuing resources as well as honoring the sanctity of uncontaminated biomes. This is the practical embodiment of the Star Trek prime directive of non-interference. I surmise other intelligences in the galaxy would come to the same understanding of value in variety being important to preserve. Probably the prevalence of this universal conclusion is why alien visitors have not been prominent.
Teaming up with many sailing seasteaders to build and manage kelp farms was thrilling, spirited work. Seeing dolphins and whales visiting and breeding by our fertile islands was a heartwarming reversal of the previous century of slaughter. Learning the Humpback Whale language and hearing their story-songs carried through generations of their experiences was an awesome awakening for humanity to wise up to our scientific name, Sapiens, and create truly a civilization.
Picture of a popular island style: bit.ly/ethicalFrontier
Advancements in wave energy collection systems on our Quadmarans and from Liquidrobotics.com allow kelp farms to be any size without having to anchor to the sea floor. The floating island size of just a few hundred members who all know one another has been my preference. Our float isle culture is becoming very coherent with regular celebrations and shared understandings.
The hardest thing for me to get used to was eating “corn fakes” for breakfast made from the processed kelp. Of course I could have stocked up on imported food, but the principled local choice is satisfying.
Achieving food self-sufficiency was just in time for the worst pandemic in history. It brought migrants in great droves to permanent enclaves on the ocean
Fortunately, solar smelting of ores and also earth-crete materials to create the floating island structures had been developed enough for the massive building expansion to be no detriment and actually benefit climate stabilization, aiding species preservation around the globe.
The low cost of the highest quality seafoods cultivated at kelp Islands put many rapacious food industries out of business, especially with continued mercury contamination in trawler caught fish and bycatch fed to so-called “farmed” penned fish.
People abandoned lands with mosquito borne diseases and other problems. Monocrop land businesses failed more frequently. Fences came down and native species roamed again.
There were some float isles proud of “pirating” software, but I was proud to be a citizen of a float isle using the first value accounting system which distinguished work contributed to the commons from work detracting from the commons. The unique currency is given to software creators and content artists of all sorts in proportion to a local usage and appreciation formula. The exchange rate with each fiat currency is based on the proportion of that currency representing known value added, not value taken. — Money infamous as the “Route of all evil” is devalued. Recipients can buy bio-fuels, produce, or labor from us and others in the world using this ethical accounting system at favorable rates. As our trading partners expand, I predict people will recognize the corruptness of the casino currencies (including Bitcoin) misrepresenting actual values. It’s uses will plummet and the wealth will migrate to cooperative creators, not takers. Greed is not rewarded in this economic system. Push advertising is not used to support worthy offerings, as they are well supported by this accounting system, and most people recognize the push attempt as suspicious of corrupt motives. News reporters and scientific researchers are supported independently.
All kinds of production continues to be softwarized with more capable 3-D printers. Things are made from local materials or recycling, not centralized mass production and distribution.
As the land and sea egg baskets of the world multiplied with more independence from physical supply chains, both social interconnection and cultural diversity increased along with security from existential threats. Longevity confidence is better than at any time since the atomic bomb awakening to our awesome powers and risks.
2020 taught us more than just our vulnerability: Remember to stop and reflect on priorities; online meetings became the norm instead of travel; censorship backfires.
As was true so many times in the 12,000 years of the Holocene epoch, boats enabled humans to expand across Planet Water. This time, we wisely secured places for other species in the process.
–End.
An updated version of this story of & by Chris L S Panym is at:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1I6v0JTjgd9D7AccmNuvsUMNTqqtTIkIjQn_d4zsA4E8/edit?usp=drivesdk
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