Talking Trash
24 September 2013 | Swimming Pool Anchorage,, West Holandes Cays
John
You know there is not a lot going on when the high point of the day is burning trash on shore.
Shawn's back was feeling better today so we waited until it was very calm and dropped the dingy in the water.
We ran over to another cruising boat here, in the anchorage, and asked about trash disposal.
We had previously been told, by the official who collected our crusing permit fee, that that we could pay the Kunas who lived on BBQ Island $1 per bag and they would get rid of our trash for us.
But the other cruiser said that they would just throw it in the ocean. We had read blogs where people had seen the Kunas throwing trash in the ocean or into mangroves which amounts to the same thing since the first torrential rain would flush the trash from the mangroves into the ocean. These were people who had paid their dollar only to see the Kunas paddle 100 yards away and just throw the trash in the sea.
The cruisers suggested that burning our trash on the beach was the best option and told us where there was a trash pit that was probably still smoldering from the trash they had burned earlier.
So we took the dingy over to Banedup Island and added our trash to the smoldering pit. Then we soaked a paper towel in gasoline from the dingy tank and added it to the pile to try and get the flames going on our trash. That worked and a few minutes later our trash was history and the flames died down. The atmosphere got another small dose of carbon emissions and we had an opportunity to reflect on how many tons of such trash we had added to the problem in our lifetimes.
We probably had a total of about 4 to 6 gallons of trash that we had accumulated in two weeks. That is a far cry from the 40 gallon trash can full that we placed on the curb once a week while we were living in San Jose. That 40 gallon can represented only part of the trash we generated in a week since we ate out a lot, generated trash at work, and burned a couple of tanks of gasoline every week.
Its obvious that disposal technology is not as big a part of the solution as eliminating as much of the cheap plastic packaging as we can. That is one reason I like to do business with Amazon.com. They have a lot of packaging solutions that use recyclable materials.
Amazon does not have to deal with the appearance of products on shelves or to worry about packaging designed to prevent theft so they can send us things like the heads for our sonicare tooth brushes in a simple cardboard box instead of a plastic blisterpack that is too big to fit in someone's pocket.
We are not crazy about getting rid of our trash this way but it seems like its better than the local alternative and probably exactly what has happened to our trash many places in the world.
In California landfills can become the luxury neighborhoods of the future (Newport Beach) but that does not happen too many places in the world.
In the states we do a pretty good job of keeping the consequences of all the trash we generate out of sight. The only really strong memories I have of the process is the aroma of Milpitis California on a windless cold winter morning when the smell from the landfill lingers over the freeway to delight all the commuters on the 880 freeway.
We did hang onto our crushed aluminum cans as we can probably find a way to recycle them when we get back to Shelter Bay.
Our can crusher from Bed Bath and Beyond has been a big help in reducing the volume of aluminum cans. The can crushers cost between $10 and $15 and the durable ones are made of steel which rusts. One can crusher lasts us a year or two before it gets rusty enough that we replace it.
The vast majority of the trash we generate is packaging. We try to minimize how much of that we take with us when we leave the dock and eliminate boxes and plastic wrapping whenever we can but we still end up with things like the containers for the HT milk and other containers where it is not practical to remove food from its packaging in advance.
At sea much of our trash can go overboard, in the middle of the ocean, but plastics can't. In a month long passage we organize and reduce the volume as much as we can and even clean plastic packaging in sea water to try to keep organic content to a minimum so the trash does not get too stinky. Organics and cans can go overboard but these days we have to be careful that something as simple as a steel can or glass jar does not contain plastics, too.
The folks on the other boat that gave us the trash advice have been cruising Panama for years.
Yuck.
They started in the gulf coast of the US and have never gotten far enough to realize that there are much nicer places in the world. If I had to spend my retirement cruising Panama I think I would find myself wishing that Jack Kevorkian was still around.
We had held some hope that the San Blas Islands would redeem Panama in our estimation but we are slowly admitting to ourselves that this is not going to be the case.
I think that one of the reasons that Panama is attractive to many on the bottom rung of the cruising community is that there is a major lack of regulation and enforcement here. We have been in anchorages with boats that are obviously not in any condition to go to sea again and whose crew look like they have not been sanitary enough for polite company for quite a while. Some of these boats are involved in a cruising industry that caters to backpackers where the owners probably eek out enough income to pay for the beer by hauling low paying kids who are wandering the world for a few years before settling down at home.
Thirty five foot boats will pull into anchorages with 10 people on deck.
In most parts of the industrialized world the small boat cruising business is regulated and boats that engage in that trade must meet certain minimum safety standards and their skippers must be licensed. But even in a rule intense place like Australia there are some pretty shady operations. We cruised the Whitsunday Islands on one such catamaran a few years ago. We had a great time because the boat was full of Irish backpackers who did know how to party but the boat itself was a mess.
One person who booked a lot of backpacker cruises was telling a prospective client that there was virtually no regulation of the small boat cruising industry in this part of Panama and Columbia and that some of the boats were not safe. His pitch was that he inspected all the boats he booked people on and that they were better than most.
We were listening to the VHF marine radio in Portobello one morning when the informal cruiser net was dominated by one guy who said he had an old engine and an old Chinese made generator that were available for anyone who wanted to claim them for parts. He said, on the radio, that if nobody wanted them he was throwing them overboard.
The expat Americans in places like Portobello have the dissipated look of people who have chosen Panama because beer is $12 a case here.
I'm writing this at dawn on the 24 because we had a thunderstorm pass over us around 4:30 this morning. It lasted a couple of hours and dumped a reasonable amount of rain on us. We were up and keeping our eyes on things because some of these thunderstorms can bring brief periods of 45 kt winds but that did not end up happening this morning. We continued to swing in our tight circle that is determined by the length of our anchor chain.
Ill post a screen shot at the top of this blog entry that shows how consistently our position has remained within our circle. The circle on the chart (light green) is set at a radius of 34 meters which is determined by how much anchor chain we have out plus the length of the boat because the GPS receiver antenna is at the stern. Then we add a couple of meters for GPS error and to allow for the fact that we never know precisely where we dropped the anchor.
Our track is shown in pink (older tracks) and red (recent tracks accumulated since the computer was last started). The cluster of pink outside the upper right part of the circle shows the circles we did while choosing an anchoring spot. Our approach is somewhat like what dogs do before they finally lie down.