Close to nature and at her whim
Hailed as our savior in clean mobility and finally fully embraced by the automotive industry, lithium or 3Li is the main component in the electric car batteries. Tesla Motors jump-started this e-car revolution and its founder Elon Musk took over from the late Steve Jobs …
My dream was to live sustainably and Radu’s dream was to travel. We found the SV Imagine and combined our dreams. We pushed off the dock three years ago and I started writing while sailing into Mexico, in the cockpit, typing into my cell phone. …
Nature is exuberantly creative, inventive and expansive but always, well, natural. The artificial is a human invention. Only humans can and want to escape the natural. Humans pursue the artificial relentlessly. The artificial seems to make us feel secure. Germs are fought with drugs and …
Is it in us on a cellular level that we have this urge to compare? Or is it a left over animal instinct when being the first to eat in a pack meant power and a better chance of survival? Anyone sensitive enough to consider …
You might remember a time when sitting around and staring into space was a pastime. A pastime of a time past. Now young, old, women, kids, men, everyone is busy all the time. Every increment of time is filled, with work, commuting, family, entertainment. I …
Iceland has everything: breathtaking landscape, glaciers, volcanoes, waterfalls, fish, sheep and energy. And so much of it. Countries worldwide try to save energy and find alternative energy sources. Uniquely Iceland will never have to worry about energy nor fresh water. This volcanic island is sitting …
Ísla Partida has a thriving bat population. Uniquely adapted, these bats catch and eat fish with long clawed feet and carry their catch in a pouch between their legs and wings. An ocean upwelling nearby provides constant supply of the little fish these bats feed on. The …
I cannot help but wonder if everything we have been taught about a successful life is nothing but a big scheme. It seems that only a few and, most often, other people profit from it not us. The perfect life, money and success is dangled in …
Tiny living come in all forms, can be on land or on water, mobile or permanent. Tiny is making an impact. It’s a game changer. Tiny houses are now trendy in the US. So trendy that there is a program on the American Home&Garden cable …
Our use of fresh water is frivolous. I understand that it feels great to stand under the running water of a shower. We are mainly made out of water, perhaps we like being one with our element. Shockingly, one in ten people on earth live …
Either greed or ignorance seem to run away with projects like Keystone and DAPL as well as the building booms of desert cities like Puerto Peñasco and Las Vegas. We built it and then hopefully have made the money to deal with the problems we …
From a cruiser’s perspective, modern air travel is quite tedious. You have to drive somewhere outside of town, stand in lines, pass security checks, wait some more, squeeze yourself into a small seat. And there you sit until you’re released. I try not to think …
Beginning of August we hauled out the Imagine. The prices here in Puerto Peñasco for sanding and painting are so good, that we decided to go all out and sand the whole boat from top to bottom including the bright work (wood parts). The bottom …
Water is very scarce in Puerto Peñasco, where we spend over 3 months in summer of 2016. Puerto Peñasco supplies its population of 60.000 with 6-10 city wells, depending who you are talking to, and it has one large water reservoir. Several wells were being …
The Sioux tribe of Standing Rock, North Dakota is protesting and fighting in court a pipeline green-lighted for construction crossing several states to Texas. It is planned to cross the entire US from North to South and go under the Missouri and the Mississippi rivers …
07. Interview with Marie-France Cantin & Mike Knapp on SV Déjàlà/Canada. Marie-France and Mike wanted a classic sailboat with high-tech brains. Carefully renovated, she has an electric engine and the most energy efficient electronic systems available. Just after we had anchored in Bahía de los Ángeles we heard a call …
Living is minimized on board, we have less clothes, toys, books. But we need equal amount of food. It’s just that on land, we can produce as much trash as we like. On a boat, we keep our trash until we reach land. Some people …
We are addicted to it. Me, Radu, our society, we all love electricity. The majority of sustainable energy effort goes towards replacing energy from fossil fuels with electrical energy. Rarely have I seen a community without it. In Bahía Magdalena rattled and huffed a ginormous …
Imagine living in 250 sq feet/ meters with your husband and a dog. Imagine your closet contains 10 T-shirts, 7 shirts, 5 shorts, 5 pairs of shoes, a jewelry box the size of a large shampoo bottle. Most of your clothes are sailing and fleece …
Radu is learning how to filet a fish, a Pargo rojo (Pacific Red Snapper). We met Antonio, the sheriff of this small village, when he secured our dinghy on the beach the tide had broken loose and was about to float away. They started talking …
Personal hygiene on a boat can be a challenge. It’s interesting to live on the water and to have so much water around us and not to be able to use much of it. We have two water tanks of 40 gallons/ 151 liters each …
A while ago, back in San Diego, we had sundowners with a young couple who are renovating their powerboat in our marina. He has been fascinated with motors and is a mechanic from when he was a teenager. She defied her parents and studied marine …
We want to imagine how the future and how we can help shape it. How will we live in 50 years? Will we have found ways to sustain our thirst for energy? Or will we have found ways to scale back? What will we drop …
