How to Fix the MICX.

So here I am in Nazaré, just about reconciled to the fact that I have to get Alec to move the Anna M to the cheaper and less accessible part of the boatyard, where the lift cannot go but Alec can with his trailer. There I shall simply keep her from the elements as best I can until such time as there are serious funds available to fit her out again. At least I seem to have worked through my grief at this state of affairs, and Nazaré has a fairly ideal climate for the job. While being fairly dry, there is often a good deal of cloud cover and a breeze from the north, which stops things getting too scorched.

My concept for the Anna M has changed somewhat. To save the expense of a serious bank of batteries, and maintain autonomy, the Beta diesel is going back in after all; however it will be drinking hydrogen as well as diesel oil, and an electric generator will be bolted on instead of the gear box, and the electric drive will go in as planned. One decent lithium battery should provide about three hours of drive, enough for going in and out of harbour and so on.

I have had a change of heart about my diesel engine since seeing what Alec has done with his old van. He has installed a simple electrolizer for hydrogen, which with about the same amount of battery power as the headlights, produces enough hydrogen from water to reduce his diesel consumption by about 30%, and drastically cleans up the exhaust and the engine too, with cleaner and more efficient combustion going on. There is no need to store the hydrogen or even to separate it from the oxygen - both gases are simply fed into the air intake. Alec has invented an ingenious and simple way of insuring that the electrolizer only runs and produces hydrogen when the engine is running.

Alec topping up his hydrologiser with tap water.

Especially for a boat, this is a very promising way to go. It would seem impossible for everyone to get huge battery capacity, even if they could afford it, and anyway what nasties does the production of the batteries involve? Ideally one would eventually replace the engine with fuel cells, as one gets on to producing enough hydrogen aboard from sea-water, but that too is all some way down the road, at least unless one happens to be super-rich. Similar considerations apply to land vehicles, and we need big change 'yesterday'. I realise it is already late in the day, but better late than never, and it's no use sitting around wringing our hands while one target for carbon reduction falls after another and while more and more people all over the world are finding their way of life becoming impossible.

Then there is the consideration that many, perhaps most, of the country people are far too dependent on diesel engines, and under too much pressure to survive, for them or their communities to think of buying electric vehicles any time soon; anyway, if one were to work out the carbon footprints incurred in the making of the ev's, one would surely find there is nothing to be gained from too sudden a changeover, even if it were possible.

Moreover governments will be imposing carbon taxes; but squeezing people financially, as well as trying to make them feel guilty, is not the way to pursuade them to buy into sustainability! One is more likely to make gilets jaunes of them, or have them vote for the likes of the Ducky. Then again, there is the possibility of transforming the emptying countryside, especially hot desert places with their massive resource of solar power, by means of 'farms' for making hydrogen with sunshine.

Now the first priority for the Nazaré Project is to put together a marketable kit of Alec's hydrogen gear. It looks like I shall be going back to the role of my great grandfather Aston, as a salesman! But like his son, I do enjoy experimenting and tinkering with machinery, which he did with planes; and besides, if I am ever to have the peace of mind for swanning around in my boat again, I would like to have made some little contribution to saving the planet.

The big mystery is, why does it fall to the likes of Alec and myself to do this kind of work? The internet reveals plenty of people at it, but they mostly seem to be working on a shoe-string, while any amount of money can be found for arms or banks. Old Ike, President Eisenhower in case you don't know, who did perhaps more than anyone to win the Nazi war on the western front and thereby establish the USA as 'Leader of the Free World', famously warned in his valedictory address of the 'military-industrial complex' (MICX for short). Their power today, and their unprecedented degree of connection with the current US presidency, no doubt far surpasses his worst nightmare. The only antidote he could suggest was 'an alert and informed citizenry'. We evidently need to do better, yet I suggest something similar is required with regard to climate change and all our other woes!

Of course the oil industry is in there with the MICX, but I would furthermore suggest that the one thing the whole MICX crowd hate is people they can't control, who have the effrontery to take power into their own hands! Good Heavens, if they do that, then besides not having the world 'over a barrel' for the oil, there won't be any excuse to spend all those zillions of other people's money, in no inconsiderable degree upon themselves, in order to 'defend the oil supply'*.

How much safer and better it would be if the MICX crowd stopped baiting Iran, as well as meanwhile selling arms to other equally (or more) deplorable regimes in the Middle East! And instead of fighting or being terrorised, how wonderful it would be to see people there farming hydrogen, sending cylinders of it to market rather in the way that family farms in Ireland used to send off their churns of milk! The lorry that takes them away could be delivering sun-distilled sea-water. The money is there to set it up, along with everything else to do with solving the whole climate/fuel/environmental crisis, but unfortunately it has been diverted for evil purposes.

Empty country and sunshine in Portugal.

Instead of driving up the autoroute from Faro, I came up through central Portugal, via Almodovar, Beja, Evora and Santarem. A beautiful drive, with empty roads, though very bendy in parts especially the first leg in the Algarve.

*More on the MICX here.