Welcome back to the Clean Sailors podcast.
Let's talk about sailing, marine industry and innovations towards guessing a clean.
I'm your host Holly, founder of Clean Sailors and a sailor myself with a passion for the
health of our mighty oceans. Through conversations with innovators, inventors, adventurers and
inspirational sailors, we're looking at those who are helping to change the way things are done.
Now, the turn of twins may need little introduction. With various adventures and accolades,
see you guys and land. They've tried to slid and jord and pushed both themselves and resources
to the maximum. A few years ago, they set out to sail to the motion-mote part of the Atlantic
on a second humpo with an electric engine testing hydrogen cells, new anti-failing technology,
and while supporting microplastic research. Let's hear more from these two professional
adventurers Ross and Hugo. Hello both and thank you for joining me. Hi, thanks for having us.
You're very welcome. So let's start with a very basics. Who are you both? What do you stand for?
And what are you interested in? We are the Turner twins. I'm Hugo. My brother is Ross with 35-year-old
British adventurers and why we exist. Everything's focused on learning more about the world
through new technology and adventures. So where most people try physical challenges, we have
ticked a few of those boxes, but what we're really interested now is testing new emerging technologies
in whatever capacity, whether that's on land, whether on the sea, whether in the air. And generally
speaking these technologies have helped fight climate change. So that's what we've been doing over
the last five years. We have been trying to reach the pulse ability, which is the most remote
points on the continents and in the oceans. So it's very difficult to pigeonhole us as mountainers
or sailors or pilots because we kind of do a bit of everything. I'd venture as I'm always
trying to learn about the world. And what then was the blue pole project for you? Because that
was a slightly new topic being on water and sailing. So the blue pole project for us was all about
pushing the boundaries of new technology. And in particular, I'm sure there's a lot of sailors
out there who've heard of ocean vault and going electric. And we've done a number of electric
adventures on two wheels, four wheels and in the air. And we thought the marine industry is really
far behind for various reasons, which is probably another podcast in itself. And we thought
can we look at, as you said, buying a second hand boat, taking the old engine out, putting a new
electric emission free point of use and ginean and then going off and trying to get to the
center of the North Atlantic doing a plastic survey. It all sounded very new, but we're so used to
doing things that we've never done before, whether it's flying across Australia, electric bikes
across Europe, etc. We're not afraid of learning as we go. I think Richard Branson has the best
example he says, don't worry if you don't know everything kind of let the point when you start,
learning along the way is absolutely fine and very much encouraged. So we knew we had the
skill set from multiple projects before and finding an electric engine actually was more
difficult than we thought. About a month before we left in our class 40, we had a totally different
electric engine planned to get in the boat. It came from Europe and the engineers said,
I said, it's just not going to work. It's not going to fit. And then we're going, well,
I got, you know, we've got sponsors. We've got timelines. We've got weather. We've got film crew,
everything's all booked. There is a time I'm at. Can't really shift because this wasn't
obviously planned. An amazingly we spoke to a boat builder who knew a mate of a mate and we
managed to buy an electric ocean vault engine off somebody else who was going to fit it onto
there. But we put it onto ours. A lot of a lot of work went into sorting that out and it was
really interesting. It was hindsight that you learn a lot about these projects all the most,
where you could have improved what could have been done differently and that's certainly the
ocean vault. There's pros and cons for our project but sending it had a bit of a sticky time with
performance. Just slightly geek out on the whole sailing side of it. Why did you choose a class
40? We chose a class 40 because I think we needed to do several thousand miles on a boat and we
wanted to do it as fast as possible. But also we wanted a performance element too. Going off
in comfort would have been great and maybe in hindsight would have been really, really nice.
But we've also got to think about how we're going to sell this to our sponsors and the brands
that supported and going off on a blue cruiser. But didn't have the same sexiness of the appeal
to a class 40. Yeah, it was really a time scale and marketing really. It was why we chose a
class 40 and we chose second hand, a because of cost and b. Why shouldn't we be able to use a
second hand boat and do it up and learn more about it? I mean, we knew that we were going to have
to strip the whole engine out and all this technology to put everything back in and if you're going
to create a new one that's fine but it takes a long time and we wanted to get a boat as
quickly as possible and do a project on our timeline rather than boat builders' timer. It would have
been nice to do it on a swan or an oyster without the saber peel or foiling as we've just been
talking about. But it is an exceptionally great boat, right? And it's well-trived and in terms of
offshore sailing, particularly in racing, certainly for the number of crewet set to that you had. But
I think what made me smile when you were mentioning it, Piga was also having the element of
your confidence in your skills and your abilities, right? Because I appreciate that, or I imagine
both of you aren't necessarily saying this, the degree in which you label yourself as such,
but the fact that you would pull this together, not only just doing the sailing and heading out
mid-Atlantic, which in itself is not a small ordeal, but actually the work on the boat,
you had quite a bit to do to prepare the vessel. We took the boats delivery from the US and it was
run by an old charity organisation in North Carolina and we stripped the boat back to a hull,
our cells and then rebuilt it ourselves from the bottom up. It was a good challenge, nothing like
scared us there. They're frustrating thing with some of the rebuild, particularly when it comes to
composites and n-general, that stuff is we needed special to spoil that. And because of the
time of the year, it was spring, everyone was super, super busy getting all the other boats
and commitments they had elsewhere, sorted first before they could tend to us. There was that
frustrating lag in terms of we wanted to do today, but they can't do it until three weeks time.
But now we loved it. It was really important that I was secondhand because there's a huge, huge
environmental impact of building a new boat. There's nothing that the old boat couldn't do,
that a new boat could do. We spoke to a director, an ex-director of the Volvo Ocean race,
and we were saying what boat to go for? We were going to go for our figure out too, and about a
30 foot boat. He said, well, why don't you kind of double it? Make it bigger. As you can
just said, a little bit sexier, brands might then actually go well because maybe there's a little
bit more boats and a little bit more money. It's taken a little bit more seriously. And we said,
what's the difference between a new boat, old boat benefits? And the biggest thing that kind of
stuck with us, he said, new boats break on the day one, old boats break on day one, you never,
ever know, you can't tell. And so we thought, well, if it's going to break, we might as well break
a secondhand boat rather than, you know, we've watched the TJV and then they're pulling into
Paul in Akarin, you're somewhere going, yeah, broken the boat and it's a brand new,
multimillion pound boat. So the benefit of the secondhand boat, there was ample benefits to a second
hand boat rather than using a brand new one. I think also, it's the opportunity that you had
to work on it yourselves and appreciate most may not have done that, right? Season sailors often,
you know, will tweak various bits and pieces and be able to fix the rudimentary, but being
able to stretch it back and build it back the way that you did it, in not an insubordinate amount
of time, I might as before your passage, also I imagine giving you confidence that if anything
were to go wrong whilst you out there, the uni exactly what to do when it's look. We took a
completely apart, every single fitting fixture took it completely apart. So yeah, that is another
benefit of doing it all bit, it was incredibly stressful and we were living on the boat down at
Saxon Warf doing her up. Yeah, every morning we'd be a cups of coffee, eggy bread on the on the
stern and then crack on with the day and we'd finish about a seven-eighth clock at night,
do it again in five days a week or a couple of months, just a series of experience seriously long time.
Very cool, I want to make smile on my face, not the people that we all would see, but
I can see how just from start to finish this would have been such an event to be made and just
getting really into it rather than just being given a bow, a couple of crew taking you out somewhere,
I understand the theme of the boat to get your hands dirty. I think the other side of the
class 40, we've done a fair bit of sailing on the South coast in Benito's and Janos from 30 foot to 45 foot.
I've sailed the Atlantic and got about 10,000 miles of sailing and so for us, yes, there's certainly
a point which our school level was above and below part depending on what boat we wanted to go for.
We sailed in a figure out too because as I said earlier, that's the boat we wanted to go for.
It's simple enough, it's small enough, it's manageable and then we thought, you know, as Mark
has said, double your dreams, aim big, get the right crew around you if you can and there's not,
yes, obviously the performance, yeah, if you really want to thrash a class 40, you can go
extremely quickly and think of some get quite spicy but as long as you sail within your comfort
zone, you can bring the sail in, you can make it slow, well, you can sail a little bit more into
wind, etc. So there's certainly areas of our sailing experience that has limitations but nothing
you couldn't adjust while you were sailing at both of the class 40 variety. I understand,
true to decision, we were talking about prox obviously prior to her recording and you just said a fantastic
one there which was double your dream aim big. So I think we can note that one down. You had this
great speedy, well-built, class 40 boat second hand and you took out the engine and a pasted it with
an electric one. You touched on that early and rusted, I do want to hear more from both of you about
what drove the decision in the first place, actually installing this new engine into the boat,
what that process was like, easy, difficult and ultimately also what then the outcome was by
having an electric engine on board a sailing boat which you were sailing on, sure. At the heart of
every project we want to use new technology and we hadn't experienced firsthand or heard of anyone
we know that had used an electric engine, having looked online about the pros and cons of it,
there's a lot of different reviews so we wanted to find out firsthand the actual benefits of that.
Secondly that definitely helped with the buy-in from partners because there was that environmental
the sustainable element of the project which they could tell their story as well through that.
So we went to Ocean of Altwind, Stood, the engine which was a nightmare trying to get out the
old diesel engine just with the two of us. At least if we broke the diesel engine it wasn't too much
for a problem because it was completely old and accurate but one surprise that we had was in the
engine mount because the boat had come from South Carolina on the East Coast of States we really
took the engine mount off and there was a nest of brown widows and black widows spiders all over
the boat which was quite an interesting one because we didn't really know what did you do?
We put them in a tough wear box and put them on the back of the boat for a week or two as pets
and I think they are the old dides of cold because it's miserable and cold in the UK.
Lucky you're still in the terms of actually then installing the electric engine in the diesel
enders place. How old is that? You get some support from it presumably?
Yeah we had an amazing engineer called Wayne who spent weeks on the boats early mornings late nights,
herald pullouts are stressed but it's a system that they've given some time and thought to
because essentially you're going to be converting all the boats or most of the boats they put
these electric drives in will be replacing the diesel engine so they fit in place pretty easily.
We had a bit of fiberglass work to do on the core of the boat but other than that it was
literally diesel engine out and zed drive electric motor in plus the batteries the batteries went
where the diesel fuel went. In theory that was straight forward and it's not impossible you don't
have to completely re-engineer the boat so it's very thought out. It took yeah good week or two to
actually install the electric drive the batteries the engine management system the throttle
the controls the wiring. Yeah there's lots of work that goes in I think in principle we all
think oh there's a electric motor a battery on off switch and forward and backwards and off you go
but they had to calculate the polis of the boat so the whole shape and the water what the
velocity of the boat would be a certain given kilowatt hour or power outage what the capacity of
the batteries were in order to give you range and we were trying some finishulate the new anti-fowl
as well so that was all quite a mystery and because the boat I think was 2009 it was 37
and a hold number 37 of the plus 40s they didn't have the exact polis so I think they took the
polis from a 2013 boat so yeah there's a lot of unknowns but that's the world that we like
living in in the sense that if there are lots of unknowns that's exactly where we need to be with
these projects. Lots of unknowns I'm smiling again because most people appreciate
would like the opposite. I'd love to hear what we're saying about the hydrogens that technology
because that was something else that you were testing on this boat how did that interacts just in
general with your passage and what utility came out of it for you? Hydrogen was really interesting
and definitely still today. Hydrogen is really, really, almost conceptual there's a few
boats out there the Americas cut chase support boats using hydrogen at the highest technology level
and speed amazingly but apart from that hydrogen on a boat on a small scale some of the ferries in
the kind of island transportation are looking at hydrogen but we had to try and find a hydrogen
fuel cell for a boat which is known mean feet at a certain price point so we spoke to Phil Sharp,
the sailor who's got his own in mocking out hydrogen and then we started looking at the cost of
that thinking you know that's just wild absolutely wild as he said we're not professional sailors
it's on his level so what alternatives are there so we actually ended up speaking to a company called
TCP Eco based in where they've got a number of satellite offices around the UK and they use
a huge amount of hydrogen for residential roadworks, railworks where noise needs to be kept to
a low and they use thousands, literally thousands of fuel cells around the country so we spoke to
them and said can we fit one of your fuel cells into the boat to charge the electric motor or
batteries and then obviously that powers the motor and after a bit of jiggery poultry they'll
that okay as long as the fuel cell stays totally dry and one of the big concerns was that salt vapour
kills hydrogen engines almost instantly and so we took the punt we installed it and if anyone
knows when Anderson lead is it's quite literally just negative, on negative, positive and positive
and that trickle charged the batteries so we could charge the batteries by about 1.2 kilowatts an hour
and that would last one canister of hydrogen would be about six hours worth of charging and
only 250 grams of hydrogen was in that canister so really dense in energy and so we could almost
double our battery capacity with 500 grams of hydrogen in theory that was wonderful but you know
when you start getting lots and lots of canisters on board starts becoming a little bit of a
logistical nightmare and say credit where credit's due had agreed it really well in finding an
alternative, very in mind this fuel cell was not marine it was for industrial use commercial use
on railway and motorways and residential else it was not a marine but we managed to make it work
which was really cool yeah it's very impressive hey incredibly impressive I think it's also one of
those elements where as you said it's again we're more familiar with it operating in a first
in non-led term marine environment let's say and I think that's something that is really interesting
also about the electric is how this technology is actually being employed on almost the every day
for the everyday persons if you like because I appreciate that the premise of sort of electric
engines in boats in particular is not new and nor was it entirely new sort of when you were
trying it ocean vaults obviously it was established at Nste now but it's still slightly controversial
for a couple of reasons as it is on on land right with our cars and the hybrid versus EVs etc.
how is the electric engine for you how did it fare obviously the hydrogen is battery support but
the electric engine you can't go without it and how was that the electric engine was great well firstly
my assume thought of this were ages since did budget we had no gas stows or anything on the boat
we could just run kessels and all electrical appliances from the battery which was oddly really
nice to do like you didn't have to bother with starting little stows or anything it was just
kettle straight on so that made cooking an eating quite simple it's far as the performance goes so we
had 11k as a battery and you can have as much kilo hours or batteries you possibly would like
obviously there's a huge cost to lithium-ion batteries so we had to balance costs and range and we
had these poles on estimated range from ocean vault for a class 40 so I think it's about 50 to 60 miles
they said we could do using the electric motor with 11k as a battery at about five knots so
five knots 50 nautical miles that's pretty good for getting in and out okay fine in theory reality
was I don't think they got the poles exactly right for the shake of the hull we were also
trying to finish late and doing some testing for them with the new anti-fell so that increased drag
but the drag they said would be very minimal so I've got all written down here because there are
a lot of numbers but in short and in reality this is what the engine power ended up being
or performance switch so between two and three knots we could go for but with 11k hours of battery
we could probably only get 10 to 15 miles nautical miles on that which is a problem if you're
doing two three knots and you've got a knot of tide two knots of tide against you which you're
not really moving and there are a couple of times going out of the soaring where we weren't
really making much in the way I've had way so 11k hours of battery so in simple terms if you're
using or at an engine run rate of 5.5kWh you can run that battery for two hours and that's
you done so if you can run it at two kWh and we were trying to find the sweet spot in terms of
as lower RPM as possible but maximum speed for that RPM was around about two to 2.3kWh
so there's about just over five hours worth of cruising it which is really really tricky to
understand the reality of the boat is 10 to 15 miles if you're trying to get out the soaring
you're just about doing that if you find it's too windy you've got a problem then you're not
getting back to your home port that was the challenge that we were trying to balance we also
had the hydrogen fuel cell on the boat which obviously gave us a charge of 1.2kWh and per hour
which if you took that off the two to the two kWh and now that you're actually burning your
net losses only about one kWh hour which gives you a cruise time of the 11 hours but you're
only doing two knots, three knots and if you're balancing the tide again that's the reality in the
issues that we had to constantly think about as like right if we're leaving port your our
bingo point I a we can end up half the range because we need to get back so that was a real
real challenge but again it's exactly what the project was setting up to achieve you know we
weren't proving that sailing as a concept works because we all know that it's actually right what
can we learn from the engine what can we learn from the system that we've put on the boat and
help me share that and tell people right well this is the challenges this is you know lying in the
sound this is where you can improve on in the future. So you're right it's an exceptional opportunity
you're not necessarily there to prove anything it's just to try it which is why it's so refreshing
to talk to you because I think there's an element of certainly in the industry in general and
certainly because there's a lot of in some cases pressure but certainly some encouragement for
sailors in particular to sort of be moving towards electric engines I mean I think we're seeing it
globally still certainly in the west at the electric is the answer to all of our problems that
does weren't a different podcast because it's so heavily contested and there's such a variety of
things that go into that but that's why it's so cool to talk to you both because I also appreciate
more recently you've handled opportunity to try those kind of electric engines in a very different
kind of vessel obviously a lot shorter range vessel which I want to talk about in a second.
On the element of electric and offshore in particular you're right I mean you are battling wind
and tide you could be in a circumstance and emergency situation where you it's not five hours isn't
enough having for example you've done the Atlantic, Rarson having done the buscade three or four
times myself now anything goes wrong you you've got days and you may need to be having
engine power for days in circumstances which you know well out of your control so I can see how
on sailing yachts particularly offshore the electric capacity works for short range popping
around the coast and I'm just going to motor in even the so-called I mean the tidal rate
that the Celtic Sea up to Scotland earlier this summer and I mean it's not outside the Bristol
Channel is absolutely nuts I've not quite experienced sort of steady state like it I don't see
how an electric engine could have been in this circumstances a diesel one almost did it it was strong
I certainly agree with that this the limitations if you start looking at like more remote
flows to environment like the inner hebrides out of hebrides the islands off mainland Scotland
with such limited range as Hugo said is that five I don't think he should think of an
electric engine in kilowatts it's North miles and eleven North
like Humph double max distance at two to three knots you need to keep five hours to do it
which is you know you're going to not on a half plus a little bit of breeze and you're going
nowhere extra juice and you're literally using it up in half an hour so it was that really and people
saying well a sailing boat sail within those limitations have that mindset of the pioneers 150 years ago
you can look how many times they got shipwrecked I think four people to adopt modern technology
or to use an electric engine yes you can add more batteries on it and vast expense I think
it's about was it a thousand pounds per kilowatts roughly which a lot of people don't have that
much money to put into for instance of a 25 30 foot sailing boat the cost of an electric engine that
we put on our cross 40 is arguably half at least half the cost of the boat itself
it's a fascinating topic and they could trust us if it is it's really interesting because also
you said it I mean it's a sailing boat so operate within the parameters of sailing I think that's one of
the you know really in the circumstance if one buys a sailing boat or one sails that's what you're
therefore so the engine really is getting in and out maneuverability emergency scenario so you
really want something we can rely on flipping forward to obviously short-range battles an
aiming to even island-topping we've talked about you know the Americas Cup Chasebows you can see
a circumstance in which those you know electric boats hydrophilic ones too it can make sense tell me
about your experience a good word so we we heard the opportunity to go down and be on a candela
a or a sea eight hydrophilic electric which we say power boat we've been looking at other projects
that's pushed the boundaries on water so hydrophilals electric or hydrogen powered and this product
we saw two or three years ago it was very elementary it was certainly pushing the boundaries of
hydrophilic electric speed boats and once you get into that hydrophil position the efficiencies
go through the roof the downside is if there's a logo something you're going to break the
hydrophil and therefore but that aside it was really exciting to have the opportunity to get on this
hydrophilic boat it's about 800 kilos the whole boat is the old you put the batteries in
straight from a pole star car that's one of their partnerships they have so they're just combining
marine hull technology car battery which is already there and it eight really is a fantastic
fantastic experience very very odd incredibly smooth once you start rising out of the water you
just think how is this not been done before but then you start understanding what it can and cannot do
and if it's not on the foils it has a certain range obviously which is nowhere near it's performance
range when it's up on a hydrophilals so any sort of long distance open ocean passage dares
across the channel you know if you have damaged on a hydrophil or the weather is too choppy for the
hydrophil then the battery performance really starts then coming into play it's not like a
rip where you can just smash through the waves for hours now it's beautiful it is really really
exciting and as if that's the way marine technology is going I certainly think running a diesel
petrol engine on a hydrophil system like that is definitely I think the middle ground between
the vast weight of a battery and the limitations on energy storage so that's what I would think
hug buddhu agree putting a diesel of a petrol engine on that hydrophil yeah the tricky one is
you have probably quite a lot of draw on a foiling boat to say because you've got to have the
foils in the water coast still environments you're probably going to get a lot more people hitting
rocks in ordinance in the water but from a fuel efficiency was so active yeah it's miles ahead of
you know traditional displacement hulls miles and miles you're right the draft of those boats
is a bit of sea and also not at this stage advocating that they're available for popular use
only sure any but also just a professional service it's going to appreciate you know
foiling itself is not something that's I mean it's bloody fast that's just that way there's a whole
whole new range of elements that open up around the um let's say the safety aspects of voiling
another way is but I think it's an interesting point in the roads became the misarch and even
the economists has done a lot of stuff recently around the the high bridge versus EVs and whilst
the high bridge market is the highest at the moment certainly on land because I think psychologically
and also proof is in the pudding that having instead of the diesel or petrol fossil fuel option
alongside electric is really useful not least because of exactly what we talked about which is
rain but what the uh economists are expecting over time in the market we're searching that it's
legislation that will force hybrids out and there's already some countries who said by 20 is early
2035 hybrids shouldn't be available the market and then actually advocating that car companies
will have to stop making and selling hybrid cars by 2035 so despite the utility of EVs marrying
the two at times it looks like the general trend will be the complete abolition of fossil fuel
powered vessel speak and I've never known it all for battery powered obviously we're safe with sale
for a little while longer but it's incredibly interesting because as you said the marine industry is
there is a lot of innovation going on but it is somewhat behind the time so the extent that
how is the industry going to accommodate such legislation over time because it's a colossal shift
I mean not least because of the amount of waste and we were known about this for cars for
you know decades now and there's been you know a lot of discouragement at times between different
governments that diesel and petrol but this is coming quite quickly and actually you know there's
30 plus million registered boats on the planet and there's a ones that are registered most of
which have traditional engines in them it's not a in substantial ask to waste things that are you
know still in good working order for something which technology which is yet to be proven
certainly at scale and over long distance. This is certainly a lot of room for hydrocub synthetic
hydrocarbons I know there's Porsche and a few other partners of theirs putting in a huge amount
of money into capturing carbon dioxide and putting hydrogen with it to make a synthetic fuel
petrol diesel aviation fuel and I was reading an article on some electric dot com website
really interesting and they were talking about how synthetic fuels could help companies and
individuals reduce their carbon footprint by having this as a supplementary fuel source if it's
into existing infrastructure it can be carried at low pressure in small volumes large volumes
it can be made on sites there's no need for having big merchant oil vessels and containerships
flying around the world and fractional distillation units all that stuff really exciting because
you imagine trying to put 30 million electric engines and batteries into boats it's just not going
to even happen in a century and the cost of that and the cost of these shall I say lower end boats
there's no point in doing it whereas if you can get a synthetic fuel you don't need to change
anything at all anything at all you're reducing the amount of infrastructure used to make that
but as long as that hydrocarbon or synthetic fuel can be made from green energies wins solar
etc winner winner chicken dinner in my opinion well said I haven't heard that phrase in a
long time but it's a delicious one I think it's terrifying to hear you repeat that back to me
about putting solar electric engines in the 30 plus million register boats we've got out there
is terrifying I mean this isn't just supporting an electric roofman is also supporting an
environmental degradation I mean that's also another element of electric which we as a species
yet to conquer is actually how we make it work without degrading some of the most fragile
ecosystems on our planet I mean you mentioned the cost of lithium is exceptionally high
other factors like cobalt think Ross you know talked about this before is found in some of the
most remote and undesirable arguably elements areas on the planet such as the deep sea which we haven't
touched yet I mean species and there's a ton of stuff I researched finally being done now in response
to the concept of sort of deep sea mining becoming a little bit more a little bit of a great
reality let's say but to actually achieve an electric revolution would be at great cost I think there's
a lot of work that we still need to do to understand and like you said that so the mention of synthetic
fuels could be really interesting and obviously a lot less impactful let's say on ecosystems which
we haven't touched before it's the cumulative use of anti-fowls as well when we think about not just the
practical sides and then the financial side of making every marine vessel in mission free show we say
it's just when you add up 30 million times let's just say how many liters of anti-fowl
does a boat leech over each it would just say one liter is very conservative imagine 30,000 liters
of anti-fowl going into the water every year but then you start adding on all the massive merchant
vessels and the tons of chemical components that come off each one of those and there's an
air probably 30,000 of earth if you put the amount of anti-fowl going into the water every day in one
kind of overship will we'd stop using anti-fowl tomorrow we really would but because it's such a
small amount which we can't see spread over the ocean we always use the analogy humans are like
the frog if you put a frog into cold water and slowly boil it and we'll kill it whereas if you
put the frog into boiling water it would just jump straight out and we are that frog that is slowly
boiling itself alive we're just not we know well as the little change here and there's not
the only thing and then you get to that point may in that well I would just too far gone and this
is the interesting thing where legislation comes in isn't it so far from a very slow but
you'll point about anti-fowl I mean we've obviously worked with this is kind of why clean sailors
exist number one and secondly the premise of anti-fowl is an interesting one because there's so much
research that shows that our boats are leaving almost vague portrayals through water so it is identified
but if you know what you're looking for and have this and the equipment to pick it up but we do
leave the equivalent of airplane vapour trails in water sailing around with anti-fowl because it is
you know shedding what we're also finding and just had a great conversation with Dr. Krina
Chocon she was looking at basically composite materials and what we're finding is our boats
are also constantly shedding glass fibers which obviously have its own consequences for the
environment so I'll send you the link to those two because you might be interested but it's fascinating
because no way starting to understand the depths of the spread and the gravity of the impact of our
industry and what our you know our hobbies our passions our past times I mean it's deeply embedded
in so many cultures particularly in countries in Europe the Netherlands France the UK in particular
sailing and boating is huge I mean it's hundreds and hundreds of years old but we can't go on the
way that we have been doing not least because of the number of people now doing it and not least
because we built so many wonderful technologies and materials that were built last and we really can't
afford for them too anymore yeah we've definitely got to have more change and people have got to be
open to the idea of changing one thing that is a lasting impression from sailing newna our class
40 up that had an electric motor out by hydrogen it's exactly the same way as we drive electric cars
you just have to change the way you drive you have to change the way you sail as well and it's that
mind-set change going into the situation knowing you've got a limited amount of energy on the boat
knowing that you can only do a limited amount of miles before a decision needs to be made
knowing that you've got to plan your passage in your route around weather differently to if you had
a petrol engine because the result of running out of petrol is far less you know the likelihood is
almost zero so it's that mindset change it's a country thinking differently which is where we're
all going to have to go at some point in our lives just change the way we live people they don't
like change because it's uncomfortable so that's the last impression it was we just had to change
the mindset and with which we sailed the boat and once you get around that hurdle then it becomes
okay yeah well we can sail within the limitations of the boat the limitations of the battery
and the electric motor and it's still possible it's just you've just got to take a little longer
you've got to plan it a bit more but that's the challenge it's a huge one and it's an always
incredibly poignant way to conclude our conversation because you're right for you know for millions
of years or thousands of years certainly as modern societies we've had to adapt to what we had around us
very crudely literally what we had around us and therefore if the parameters change we learn to
re-operate within those parameters and is this another example of you know an environment
an ecosystem and an industry which needs to shift those parameters and we just start doing things
differently within them I think is incredibly poignant and it works both ways it works with
technology but it also works with just our basic resources it's certainly an exciting time I think
that you said the innovation the technology is what you're both about certainly but what that
does is actually make all of these kind of opportunities possible and solving real-life problems with
things that can be scalable and that can be useful is a great spot to be in people just need to
in our opinion on what we found whenever we go on a new project whether it's land there and see
using new admission free technologies we're always trying to read up as much as we can
around that industry or project or product or service I think the biggest thing with
admission free point of view etc is get educated just because somebody says you know this is great
electric car great you know there's no emissions it's super clean that's the front page what's the
second page you're exporting your carbon footprint somewhere else 60% or thereabouts of the UK
power grid is not green so where's that being charged and what carbon up to is that giving off
you know I think once you get skin deep and people are very easily persuaded again
that's a mission free going do it educate yourself don't be naive about it is a second hand
used vehicle petrol diesel better for the environment than creating a brand new EV is an electric
hand dry and the loop better than a towel is it I didn't know there's always other side of the coin
and I think just making informed decision and go to sources like the government website where you
can get information that's you know from highly regarded professionals or global institutes
that know what they're talking about don't go on what somebody says on a bus sign
yeah that's why I buy a second hand car I don't want to create a new one
agree what's your next adventure our next adventure is going to be setting a world
altitude record for an electric tandem parameter think of a paraglider with a big
lawnmower engine on your back and we've pre-tined with a UK company called project to build a
fully electric one which has 5.8 kilo hours of battery capacity with some funky electric motors
and we have been testing it over the last month or two heading out to French apps and France
to set an altitude record so we're aiming for about 10,000 feet well nice impressive
can I have your job yes okay well here you go and Ross Turner thank you both so much for joining me
it's been an up-suit pleasure to learn from you and with you on this topic of your blue pole of
adventure and the technology surrounding marine and sailing so far I'm really looking forward to
hearing about your next wall tree one and until then please stay safe and I hope you make 10,000 feet
thank you very much labyrinths you've been listening to the Clean Sailors podcast
for information on all episodes and for more about clean sailors head to cleansalers.com
thank you for listening and see you for the next episode