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Around the world on wind, solar and soybeans
By Gina Kim
Seattle Times staff reporter
The Earth flag ripples in the wind amid the main and head
sails of the 39-foot, wood-trimmed boat. For Joe Wilcox,
the blue piece of cloth represents two things — his dream
of sailing around the world and doing it without harming
the environment.
Wilcox will embark on his round-the-world trip today using soy-based fuel as well as wind, solar and
hydro power.
"I grew up in a small town in Kansas. I didn't know anything about the environment," said the
60-year-old Wilcox, a reserved, blue-eyed man with bits of gray in his brown hair and moustache.
"The more I traveled to different parts of the country, to different countries, I became less provincial.
We're citizens of the planet."
The voyage could take as long as five years because Wilcox will
return for months at a time to continue teaching math at Highline
Community College. A crew of three — a graduate student, a
former University of Washington economist and a law-firm
accountant — will help with the first leg of the trip, sailing in shifts
24 hours a day, planning to dock in Hawaii after three to four
weeks.
Wilcox plans to store the boat there for the winter and continue
the adventure next spring by sailing on to Tahiti and Figi.
Wilcox paid $160,000 for the boat and invested an additional
$150,000, putting in solar panels that produce 582 watts of
power and a wind generator and hydro generator that each
produce 100 watts. The hydro unit generates power as the boat
moves through the water.
Wilcox, who has lived on the boat for the past year, has gone
seven months without plugging in to any shore energy source.
"This is a full-meal deal," said Edward Schott, a compass adjuster with Captain's Nautical Supplies,
who was checking Wilcox's compass this week in preparation for the trip. "You often see one solar
panel or wind generator. But you could light a small city with all this stuff."
Also ecologically sound is Wilcox's use of a soy-based fuel — called biodiesel or soy diesel —
produced from soybean oil. Six times more carbon dioxide is used up in growing the soybeans than
is emitted when the fuel is burned, according to the Web site of the fuel's producer, Kansas-based
Ag Environmental Products.
While some sailors mix the soy-based fuel with regular
diesel, Wilcox runs on 100 percent soy diesel. With
the help of wind in the sails, Wilcox expects to use just
a few dozen gallons of soy diesel — which costs
about $3 a gallon — to get to Hawaii. He is taking
only 55 gallons on the trip.
"It's an interesting challenge. I don't know if I'm
fanatical about (preserving the environment), because
as an individual I can't really change the direction the
world is going in," said Wilcox. "Realistically, I'm not
going to change the world globally. But perhaps
people who come in contact with me, at least cruisers,
maybe they'll see it's possible."
Wilcox's passions for sailing and for preserving the
world's resources arose from his interest in astronomy.
As a sophomore in high school, he calculated the
circumference of the Earth by measuring stars.
In studying other planets, Wilcox learned of potential
dangers the Earth is facing. Now he frequently uses
such terms as "runaway greenhouse effect." Earth, he
said, has just as much carbon dioxide as Venus —
where surface temperatures reach the 900-degree
range — but here the gas is trapped in rocks and is
released as the Earth gets warmer.
"The Earth is further from the sun, so we wouldn't get
up to 900 degrees — just 600 degrees," he joked.
After growing up in America's heartland, Wilcox gravitated west, lured by the mountains. He has
climbed Mount Rainier at least a dozen times while working as a surveyor for the National Park
Service. Later he taught at a remote school in Alaska, mushed a dog team and climbed Mount
McKinley. He returned to the Seattle area in 1973, taught high-school math in Auburn and was a
state finalist to become a "teachernaut" on the ill-fated Challenger space-shuttle mission.
Sailing around the world was a dream of his that wouldn't fade. He bought his Island Packet cruiser
in December 1996 with the idea of outfitting it with renewable-energy sources.
"I certainly wanted to put in solar panels, but I didn't know if it'd be possible to run the boat with
that," he said.
A sailing trip in Samoa in 1998 solidified Wilcox's commitment to preservation. In "what used to be
paradise," waste dumped by tuna canneries had made the water too polluted to swim in, he said.
Wilcox's boat has cost him half of his retirement —
now he has to live half as long as he originally
planned, he jokes.
He named the cruiser Shepherd Moon, after two
moons located on either side of Saturn's rings. If the
moons weren't there, the rings would dissipate into
space and disappear, he said. The moons and rings
are depicted in a vibrant illustration on one of the
boat's sails, along with Stonehenge, to ground the
image to Earth.
While the boat is environmentally friendly, Wilcox
insists he and his crew won't do without any
"necessities." There's a microwave, boom box and
laptop on board, as well as a freezer that runs on only
as much energy as a 25-watt light bulb — the kind
that light many home refrigerators.
"We're not suffering any," he said. "We have a freezer
full of ice cream." |
