The Environmentally Aware Sailor

[Micca Hutchins]

	Preserving the integrity and the quality of the marine environment is an issue not only for sailors, but for everyone.

Here’s a scenario you can probably relate to: You’re on the weather rail, heading out across the open sea. Someone next to you drains their beer, folds the can, and then—in a dramatic recreation of the grizzled sailor of yore—rips it in two and tosses it overboard. Plop it goes into the drink below, sinking to a watery grave.

"I remember as a kid, holding up my empty soda can and asking the crew, 'Hey, what do I do with this now?,'" says Bluewater Network founder Dr. Russell Long. "And someone hollered back, 'Throw it overboard'!"

Like Long, when I grew up sailing, we were always throwing things overboard on my dad's boat. With all the beautiful memories I have of learning to sail, it's hard to confess, but when that great, bulging brown-paper bag blotched by bacon grease came out from the cabin, it would be passed like a bucket in a fire brigade through the hands of my sisters and brother to the aft-most person in the cockpit who then heaved it into the water. And, as we slipped over those pristine waters, I looked back astern to see that bag still bobbing in our wake. 

	According to Long and his organization, large ships are the worst polluters in the transportation industry.

That was a very long time ago when sailors like us didn't know better. We were kids-literally and figuratively—like Russell Long at the time. And like most sailors, we've moved on and become more aware of our surroundings. So has Long. A former America’s Cup competitor and speed-sailing record holder, Long has now stepped into a larger arena where he’s taking on much more daunting foes—the polluting ways of the two-stroke outboard engine, large commercial vessels, and the oil industry.

"Well, I'm a sailor, and I want the marine environment … like everyone else … to be clean," he explains. He hadn’t really been looking for a fight, but in 1989 after his mother died of lung cancer from smoking, things changed. He organized a coalition of support to ban smoking in restaurants and workplaces in San Francisco, which ultimately became one of the toughest smoking