Afloat in July?

    Spring is gradually giving way to Summer, albeit in fits and starts here in Ireland, where after a couple of radiant days we are liable to find ourselves back in chilly dampness. Dare we hope that the triumph of hope and confidence over hardship and doubt will extend beyond the turn of the seasons? There are many levels on which we may harbour possibly furtive expectations that this may be the case, and despite the lurking fear that we shall inevitably be disappointed, we struggle on in the hope that perhaps we may even live to see them all fire up together!

    We tend to become so numbed by the big boggies,- war, environmental degradation, economic

Salamanca cathedral

hardship, false narratives of all kinds - that we forget to rejoice in the little triumphs that do come our way, which is why thankfulness is so important, not to mention praise. Thankfulness to whom? Praise of whom? I do not see how life can work if we cannot find our way to some kind of faith in God; but what's more, if we are not to become caught up in some kind of phantasm exterior to our human becoming, it is necessary to settle for trying to encounter God in Jesus, crucified and risen, and to believe that he does indeed await us in the midst of all our striving and the relationships that it entails.

 

Palm Sunday in Nazaré

  So now, having got that off my chest, I am happy to report solid progress with the 'Anna M'. The epoxy/glass skin is at last finished, and it now has to be only smoothed and painted. Excellent weather and a great crew came together for the job: Arturo, a Portuguese American who grew up in New York, Anatoli from Siberia, Lulu from Belfast, and myself. It is fun to thus find ourselves transcending the stupid conflict between Russians and Americans, not to mention the little problem on our island of Ireland between north and south. The sea and sea-faring doing it again!

'Anna M's epoxy skin

    Progress is also being made below decks, and Arturo has moved aboard as mate, cook and general factotum. If only we can overcome the financial problems, and Alec can get his act together, we intend to sail north in July, with him aboard and his electric drive installed. He will be on the lookout for a partner interested in commercializing the electric drive project.

Brilliant crew, job done!

    We envisage a whole new kind of sailing sport, which will put the emphasis back on using the wind as motive power, and only using the motor when absolutely necessary. As explained in previous posts, the idea is that the propeller charges the batteries when one is sailing well. There will of course also be as many solar panels as possible. The less batteries one has, the more skill and patience will be needed; but down the road one may look to hydrogen fuel cells for 'real grunt'.

    It's been a long haul, while I have become a kind of commuter between Nazaré and West Clare. Now that the pandemic is past, it is great to see improvement in communications between the two picking up promptly. Brittany Ferries has the new ship 'Salamanca' on the run from Rosslare to Bilbao (and the motorway to Nazaré on which Salamanca is a great half-way stop), which is quicker and more stable than the old one, and leaves clean air behind instead of a big black smudge. I was kindly given a tour of the engine room, also spectacularly clean with its gas-powered engines, shoving the ship along calmly at 20 knots against a fresh SW breeze. But most of the up and down has to be done by air, and the new Ryanair flight between Shannon and Porto certainly makes the journey a lot easier. 

One of 'Salamanca's two engines

Early bird in Porto, two hours to Shannon.

    

    

    

    For all the wonders of technology, I would rather make the journey in the 'Anna M'! How I hope to be able to do so again! Still, rebuilding her has been fun in itself, and it is important because she represents the moment before modern sailing boats became completely different to the load-bearing vessels of the past. I still entertain the hope that the concepts we are playing around with in her will find commercial applications both for fishing and freight. 

    Meanwhile, talking of hope, I have to record my excitement at the candidacy of Robert Kennedy Jnr for the American presidency, my admiration for his courage and prayers for his safety and success.

'Infection Control'.

Prof Martin Cormican, expert in ‘infection control’ and member of NPHET, the national committee which ‘guided’ Ireland’s response to the pandemic, is now talking of the ‘many mistakes he believes Ireland made and what needs to change in the next pandemic’. This is promising talk, apart from the inference that the next pandemic is just around the corner. After all the last one was a century ago, on the tail of the Great War. Since it seems more and more probable that this last one came out of a laboratory, could it be that he knows more about it than we do? Anyway, I have not heard that he repents of his statement last year that:-

‘A legal obligation to accept vaccination should be considered a legitimate public policy option in circumstances where declining to accept vaccination has profound adverse consequences for society as a whole. We should consider if it is possible to develop a social consensus and a legal framework around this not just for the next pandemic but also for other circumstances where the choice of a small proportion of people to decline vaccination imposes great burdens and costs on other citizens.’

  It is one thing for NPHET to recommend vaccines, and an altogether different thing to point the finger at those who refuse to take them, and load them up with the blame for all the dreadful things which they are allegedly doing to the populace at large. This happens to be a classic old trick of the worst of totalitarian dictators.

        It reminds me of an encounter with a man in his fifties whom I count as an old friend, in 2021. ‘Are you vaccinated?’ says he. ‘Not likely’ says I. ‘Well stay away from us!’ ‘I thought I was the one who was supposed to be at risk’, says I. Imagine; my friend was vaccinated, and therefore supposed to be protected; I was in my mid seventies, had just had a course of radiation therapy for cancer, and therefore supposed to be especially vulnerable. By what contortion of logic was I going to ‘impose great burdens and costs’ on my friend?

It was a sobering reminder that totalitarian instincts are never far away in a climate of fear. Far from being assuaged by the 'great and good', this line of thought was adopted and promoted by them with truly astonishing universality, with the President of France even expressing his intention to ‘emmerder les non-vaccinés’ (drag the unvaccinated through the shit’).

     Apparently they all actually believed that their precious vaccines were going to put a stop to both transmission and infection, but they had absolutely no excuse for still clinging to this belief by the time Professor Cormican made the above statement last year. They even largely continue to do so today, when so much more knowledge of the adverse effects as well as the ultimate uselessness of the vaccines is available.

With neither apology nor retraction of their false promises, they eventually fell back on insisting that those who refused vaccination were flooding the hospitals, while meanwhile everywhere those doctors who were successfully treating covid at an early stage, or even raised awkward questions, were being given endless grief and if possible silenced. Nowadays, with many more patients suffering and dying in all kinds of ways related to the covid response than from the disease itself, those who criticise that response still find it difficult to make their voices heard.

The disturbing questions concerning the closing down of open debate and the failures to research properly and discuss the effectiveness and safety of the response, especially of the vaccines, and even the origin of the pandemic, are more urgent than ever. How did the astonishing lies about them come to sweep the globe, sweeping aside many of the principles and protocols previously established for the handling of pandemics?

In due course my wife and I caught covid from a double vaccinated son. He suffered more from the dose than we did; we would put it down to our homoeopathic prophylactic, though we were also taking a vitamin d supplement etc. Whatever the reason, we have always believed that it is better to foster our immune systems holistically than to seek to manipulate and force them. In addition to simple organic principles, this approach is rooted in our religious conviction that our bodies are ‘temples of the Holy Spirit’. Such a conviction is incompatible with opening the doors to convicted criminals, such as the major pharmaceutical companies, let alone to letting them freely break in through the walls, which is what forced vaccination amounts to. Meanwhile of course the invaders refuse to take responsibility for the damage they cause.

To a layman like myself, to try to force vaccination on people also appears to contradict every principle of law from Habeas Corpus (Your Body Is Yours) onwards. I might mention the Nuremberg Code and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Look them up! Whatever one thinks about the vaccinations, it should be obvious that the attempt to force them on people, backed up by digital health passports, is a red line that must not on any account be crossed. I remain in disbelief at the fact that for a while the likes of us could not even travel or go into a pub or cafe for the want of that bit of paper! Apartheid how are you?

Anyway is it not astounding to reflect upon the ease with which we were all deprived of basic liberties, our businesses, pubs, sports and even churches closed down? Where was the democratic process and consent? Professor Cormican has apparently been active in the cause of battery hens. Are people like him even so much as equally concerned about human freedom and dignity? Do they not see that the vast majority of us must now consider ourselves in danger of being  encaged, subject to the whims of a tiny minority of would-be ‘keepers’ who happen to be hiding in full sight when the WHO or the WEF come round? We have been warned, the tools are in place. All that’s required are further means to stoke fear!

What about our own pusillanimous concurrence? The good news is that the grace and strength to resist remain readily available. Speaking up still counts, and we remain relatively free to do so. Still, it may well be wise to assume that those tools of digital surveillance and control will have their day, as indeed they already have in many places. We have to build the networks, the community and solidarity, whatever way we can, to resist. This does demand engaging in the perilous business of narrative building, which should not on any account be left to the professional politicians.

Some of them seem to be hanging grimly on the left/right thing, which to my mind is inappropriate.  In particular I don’t fancy the tendency to lump the opinions expressed above with Euroscepticism and even climate denialism. I do see where the people who do so are coming from. We have had a stern reminder of the tale of Chicken Licken, and the likely counterproductive effects of fearing the End is Nigh. For a start, it is very difficult to actually see much evidence that the climate is indeed on course for catastrophic change here in Ireland. Frankly I hardly see it at all, and I have lived pretty close to Nature for a long time. I find it implausible anyway that we can do much about it, especially with the ‘command and control’ approach that governments adopt. Still, the evidence of warming seas and collapsing ice-sheets can hardly be ignored. The mechanisms at work are fairly comprehensible. The oil companies were sitting on the warnings of their own scientists for many years.

If it is only to free ourselves from the clutches of those massive corporations, and from the even dodgier people, such as Putin and that Saudi Prince MBS, who profit from fossil fuels, it is obviously desirable to escape our extreme dependence on them. What's more, I hope to be showing in my own little undertakings what fun it may be. Fostering our immune systems, exercising  our right to say what we think, producing our own food and fuel, sailing around the Gannetsway in as self-reliant way as possible; these  are all skills and abilities that will be lost if we do not use them!   

In democratic societies, we expect our institutions to be open, responsive and accountable, not under the sway of shady alien interests. Evidently we are falling short. We might be said to be already under partial occupation by the Enemy. We must build up our resistance every way we can if we want to keep our health, our freedom and our rights!                

ps, I just posted a video version!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTcs5CRzwUI

pps, I have received the odd comment that calls for a reply, but I don't see whom it came from. If you wish me to reply, please give an email address with your comment. Mine is gannetsway(at)gmail.com

Brother Anselm Hurt OSB, - a Truth-Seeker.

    When I was coming of age in the 1960s, we liked to think that we were a privileged generation, who could perhaps put Big Misery along with a heap of lies finally behind us, and build a new world of tolerance and enlightenment. Bob Dylan and the Beatles were our guys! Needless to say, there remained some grave problems. Within the Catholic Church, there was talk of breaking out of the spiritual fortress within which our parents had prayed and worshipped in ways that related poorly, if at all, to secular life, or often even to our own personal experience. 

    As for Downside Abbey..., with its mighty church tower presiding over the Mendip hills (frontier between Celtic and Anglo-Saxon England), we were used to considering it a bastion of the Catholic Church in England, where it had managed to establish a reasonably comfortable relationship with the national establishment. The monastery had been described as 'the best gentlemen's club west of London', and as a headmaster's quip to an Etonian put it, 'Downside is what Eton was,- a school for Catholic gentlemen'! We thought that time was fast running out for this peculiar social and ecclesiastical niche, even in 1965. It turned out to be harder to despatch than we expected, but Dom Luke Suart, with the inspiration of Teilhard de Chardin behind him, thought that he had the makings of a new narrative for the place, one that would reconcile the arts and humanities with science, 'overcome the Cartesian split', and feature a Catholic Church renewed by the Second Vatican Council, at least on speaking terms with modernity, and enabling her children to 'take on' both their own subconscious and the secular world. 

    Luke was making a huge impression with his sixth form religious instruction course; I recall earnest debate as to whether he was mad or really on to something. There was an intensity about him that was at once impressive and unsettling. We were used to blissfully and quite successfully sopping up information for the purpose of regurgitating it in exams. Now this man was telling us this wasn't good enough, echoing indeed the likes of Dylan. It was vital that we learned to think for ourselves; the very future of the planet depended on this, according to Father Luke!

     Predictably enough, he soon ran into establishment buffers. Parents were paying large sums of money for us to pass exams and 'get on', whatever they said about a 'catholic education'. My Dad  was to be heard making noises about 'those monks'. Luke was gathering a circle of disciples, among whom was Brother Anselm, but then, his course suppressed, he had a nervous breakdown, and tragically he ended up jumping out of a hospital window. Nothing was said officially, in accordance with establishment practice, except some lame story of a heart attack. The truth leaked out by way of those monks with more integrity. In due course, the leading 'flower children', Doms Sebastian, Peter, Kevin and Anselm, found their way to the Downside parish in the Liverpool docklands (yes, there had already been attempts to counter the 'best gentlemen's club' narrative). They could go and have their revolution there!

    Fiona and I joined them, living in the parish youth leader's flat while I taught in a local school. The drab old parochial house really came to life, and that was where our friendship with Anselm really began. However the revolution had to wait. Part of the trouble was the preoccupation with the unresolved situation at Downside. There was an abbatial election coming up, and Peter had quite a lot of support. We had all sorts of 'post public school' ideas for the place, but Peter was not elected. Downside embarked on a long and painful decline, which has only accelerated with time. To this day, many of us feel loss. For poor Anselm the demoralisation back then was acute, and ended his career at Downside. 

    He worked in adult education in Liverpool and made two ultimately unsuccessful marriages, though for us he remained a warm and humane friend, and we know how fond he was of his three children. He was in a bad way when his relationship with their mother finally broke down and he had to leave his home. After a while he made his way to our house in Carrigaholt, eventually getting a caravan in our field. He was great to have about the house, helping the children with homework and then he was practically so very competant.He got to know Glenstal, and the community took him on as a gardener, before eventually, with great generosity, taking one very English failed priest into the community. 

    Anselm was sceptical, a tad rebelious, humorous, passionate, open, an avowed enemy of bullshit; perhaps, like his actor brother, inclined to be trying out roles to see which fitted! All in the interest of 'authenticity'; I suppose it's one of the ways we have of trying to get at the truth! No doubt this is always beyond us, but in the course of Anselm's lifetime, it is to be hoped that we have all learnt a thing or two about getting there, and that the attempt to reveal and understand it really is the supreme business of our lives, regardless of whether this involves the odd smash-up.

    Yet who would have thought that at the end of our lives, we sixties children would be back to looking at trenches and tank warfare in Europe, and massive lies rampaging through the world, for all our vaunted new self-knowledge? Now, for instance, about covid and these vaccines; will the truth ever be established and acknowledged? There is as ever a mountain of vested interest stacked up against naked truth! The rare sensitive souls who wrestle with it tend to get into all sorts of trouble, but we are all very much indebted to them.

    Something is finally coming to a head which, it seems to me, will determine humanity's fate in this twenty-first century! So we come back to the need which has shaped this story of Anselm, to get our heads out of our own little holes, and aspire to that One Big Story, wherein truth is fearlessly embraced and where even science and art can lie down together, not to mention the English and the Irish! It is the strain and the whiff of this story that constitutes the excitement of his life, along with his zest for life and simple physical things. At least he left us a very good recipe for marmalade!

Kennedy for the Enquiry!

So here we are, another New Year, and we wish each other a happy and healthy one. Labouring under not a few difficulties, progress with the 'Anna M' was slow enough last year, but we have arrived at a point where the main doubt about getting her on the water again this year is whether it will be possible to finance it. Not much to be said about that at the moment, so I shall revisit another little matter that has been making things difficult. I have not been writing about it lately, because I felt I had said what I have to say, and all I could do was give it time, for people who know more about it to have their say, and for the truth to come out. Now, however, there is a battle to be fought. The truth is coming out alright, from all kinds of quarters, but there remain very powerful people trying to suppress it. They are about as likely to admit that their narrative is false as President Putin is to disown his!

Our brave Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, has announced that there will be an enquiry into the handling of the pandemic. 'Such an inquiry should not be about pointing fingers or ascribing blame. It’s going to be about getting to the truths, understanding what happened. What we did well, what we did badly, what could have been done better, because we can’t assume that this is going to be the last big pandemic in our lifetime,” he said.

Typical weasel words, meaning another whitewash. He and his global cronies continue to assure us that the vaccines are 'safe and effective', even while it becomes more and more clear that they are doing a lot more harm than good. The chances of them admitting same, let alone apologising, are vanishingly slim. On the contrary, they have not quite succeeded in forcing us to take their vaccines every few months for the rest of our lives, so the sooner they can drum up another big scare, the better they will be pleased.  But thank God for the likes of Robert Kennedy, who really is enabling us to 'get to the truths and understand what happened'. Will Varadkar read his book, 'The Real Anthony Fauci', let alone engage with what he says? If he does, any chance that like myself he will come to the conclusion that a lot of people, from Fauci down, need to go to prison?

As for Big Pharma, busy spending a good deal of their ill-gotten gains on huge new factories, is it conceivable that they will let their investments go to waste? Too right we may well assume there will be another big scare coming down the tracks! We may also assume that Varadkar and his likes will be in there cheer-leading the 'salvation' they will offer us. The suppression of those voices who really are interested in the truth will most probably be even more vicious than it has been this last time. The health service will become more and more dysfunctional, while we have to sit back and watch democracy and our civil rights being subverted. The only chance of an alternative is for certain people to be held accountable and real changes in our approach made. There are plenty of leads in Kennedy's book to make a start.

Here in Ireland, we may have  a pretty good place to do so. It's no wonder that Varadkar is not interested in 'ascribing blame'! Or perhaps he could explain the difference between this and the slightly less unfashionable notion of holding those responsible for lies, extortion and murder, or maybe simply moral cowardice and incompetence, to account? Come on Taoiseach, you and your likes have had a fine bandwagon supporting your story, let us hear the other side now. How about asking Robert Kennedy to come over and undertake that enquiry?

Light and Dark in the Old Country.

Gannetsway Research Group Ltd

photo by Mary O

Back in West Clare, we are inching towards giving the Gannetsway Research Group a formal identity, which we hope to do at a meeting here next month (January 2023). Meanwhile, this is how our John and I have described it on the website loopheadprojects.ie  -

Project Description

Climate change and the need to replace fossil fuels with alternative and renewable forms of energy has moved to the frontline of government policies and movements for social change around the world. This change is affecting everybody and not least the marine industry which runs mostly on diesel, a fuel that is not only adding to the CO2 problem but has recently experienced considerable price increases which puts many businesses and communities under pressure.

The resulting challenges on Loop Head are shared by many similar coastal communities. Gannetsway Research Group Ltd. (Gannetsway Ltd.) is envisaged as a social enterprise to mobilise Citizen Science to empower those in our communities who want to work together to develop and deliver alternatives to fossil fuels, primarily for boats and other applications in the marine sector. ‘Gannetsway’ refers to the coasts of the North Atlantic Ocean.

It is proposed that Gannetsway Ltd. would be initiated through a paid membership model where membership would be open to everybody interested in marine endeavours and renewable energies. Gannetsway Ltd. would aim to support its members’ activities with research, training, procurement, funding, publicity, legal and business support.

To throw in some extra fun, Gannetsway Ltd. would also provide opportunities for people to interact with the marine environment; in a CO2-neutral manner.

Project Justification & Objectives

The Loop Head Peninsula and the Shannon Estuary are perfectly situated to develop and harvest wind and other renewable energies. The power station at Moneypoint is currently transitioning to facilitate this, not only locally, but also nationally and internationally, particularly through the production of hydrogen. The estuary features a fine marina and related facilities at Kilrush, stop-off points before the Atlantic at Carrigaholt and Kilbaha, a deep-water port at Foynes and has the potential to become a major hydrogen and renewable energy innovation hub. In addition, the wider area has a long and proud maritime heritage with a wealth of accumulated knowledge and innovation already present.

It makes sense to have a group like Gannetsway Ltd based in the area where new technology can be developed and be robustly tested at sea and on the farms. Having a base here would also strengthen the bonds between the communities on the Loop Head Peninsula and along the Shannon Estuary, and onwards along the Gannetsway, and so add to local community resilience as we all face the challenges of Climate Change. Initial objectives are:

• Assess the usefulness of hydrogen electrolysers in improving the efficiency and emissions of internal combustion engines, and so reduce fuel consumption (underway).

• Replace a diesel engine of a 13.6m sailing boat, formerly used for dolphin-watching out of Carrigaholt, with an electric motor where the battery would be charged by the propellor rotating when under sail - in collaboration with Nazaré Nautica in Portugal (underway).

• Examine and agree the appropriate governance foundation on which Gannetsway Ltd. should be built, including a development panel and/or steering group, and fine tuning the business model, decision making process and membership options

We would also hope to especially collaborate with other players around the Shannon Estuary, such as the proposed Maritime Training Centre in Kilrush, with the producers of ‘green hydrogen’ promised for Moneypoint, with the Shannon Dolphin and Wildlife Foundation, and not forgetting other potential players in the shipping and aviation industries present around the Shannon Estuary and beyond.

The Shannon Estuary now as I write.

The journey home from Bilbao went well, once we eventually got on the ferry, but somewhere along the road I got the impression that the hydrolyser was not working. When I lifted the bonnet, I found a burnt out wire on the negative connection, and the water looked dirty; I took it out and cleaned it up, and under Alec's supervision over Whatsapp, had it bubbling away on the workbench and then put it back in,- not an easy task for me, it has to be said, the crucial nut that holds it having to be got on its bolt by reaching down with the three fingers of my left hand. 

The electrolyser had been kicking around since we first tested on Alec's workbench a couple of years ago; I brought it back home and tried to find some mechanic here in Ireland interested in fitting it. 'Oh you'll land me in prison' or 'what if you get blown up?' were the kind of daft responses that I eventually elicited, so I had to take it back down for Alec to fit. Anyway when I took it apart again, I found the plates covered in slime. Cleaned up, and with a weaker admixture of potassium hydroxide (caustic potash), it seemed to be fine.

I topped up the tank and did some driving, 559 km to be precise, then topped up again, which showed that we had consumed 44.1 litres of petrol, so by my calculation we had travelled 12.67 km on average per litre. This was an improvement on 11.27 km/l, which was the average for the last couple of years, but not as good as I had hoped. Under the bonnet again, I found the hydrolyser spewing brown gunk. I am hoping this was on account of having used water from our shed roof in order to weaken the mix, so anyway now there was nothing for it but to take it out and clean it up all over again. Getting it back in was even more challenging now that the weather has turned cold, but now that's done,  it's full of purified water from the chemist, and I am awaiting more excuses to go motoring in the old Citroen Picasso to get another result!

Meanwhile life at Rahona goes on; we are 'leading the good life', according to an old friend from Donegal who visited last weekend. This means among other things eating plenty of kale from the garden, which is delicious when Fiona has prepared it with garlic and butter. She's also very good at rearing puppies, though I am glad the invasion of my workshop is over now! We have kept just one out of the seven pups, who is enjoying having Mummy Nugget all to herself!

meself by Nutan

If you are interested in coming to the meeting in January, 

email gannetsway@gmail.com

From Orcas to Big Pharma and Putin, Out With Malevolence.

It is Halloween, we must chase the evil spirits and welcome all the saints.... I am at home in Ireland after three somewhat frustrating weeks in Nazaré. I had hoped to get the 'Anna M' dressed up in a coat of epoxy glass, but the weather turned against me. It was supposed to be brilliant, and indeed it was a couple of kilometres inland for most of the time, but a fog-bank installed itself on the coast, and didn't shift for days, too chilly and damp for epoxy. Then the weather turned rainy. I had just missed the chance of doing the job before the winter. Still I did get a lot of useful work done, painting and varnishing, inside and out, so hopefully it will not take too long to get her ready for the water in the Spring.

Finally the fog withdrew to seaward.

     While I was there a French couple, Maho and Fanny, sailed in with a fine strong aluminium boat, 'Liguane', with a coating of epoxy glass, whose drop-keel had been broken off by orcas, as well as the rudders being damaged. As can be seen in the photo, the keel was made of several layers of ply-wood coated with glass-fibre, and the power of the attack was amazing, showing extraordinary malevolence. There have been numerous such attacks on sailing boats off the Spanish and Portuguese coast in the last couple

Good job Maho is handy!

of years, with one boat actually being sunk.

The standard response these days is likely to be along the lines 'oh it's their sea, why shouldn't they attack sail-boats if they feel like it?' 'Probably some sail-boat gave them a hard time!' etc. They are much more likely to have had a hard time from fishing boats, which however they have not been attacking. I prefer the attitude of the Spanish firework makers who sell a box of grenades which are said to be very effective at scaring the orcas off.

    I have always disliked orcas because of the grief they give my humpback whale friends, attacking their calves if they can and eating the livers out of them. There are also plenty of reports of orcas killing seals and penguins just for the fun of it, when they don't even want to eat them. Some will say that it is foolish to assign attributes such as malevolence to animals. I disagree, believing as I do that evil or malevolent spirits do exist and are present just about everywhere.

    It is not even unrealistic to imply moral standards to plants, though here again some careful distinctions are called for. My homoeopath wife tells me how this or that 'weed' or 'poison' can be very effective remedies; so the moral quality is not intrinsic to the plant, but nonetheless weeds are bad when they choke ones vegetables. It's a matter of their role in a particular context. Even Putin, let alone Russians, are not evil in themselves, but they have misconstrued their context. The battle between good and evil is real, indeed it is the ultimate human context. If we mess up in our interpretation of it, we are in deep trouble. Fortunately Christ has the victory, for having attracted the ultimate malevolence to Himself, he was able to turn it into the means of our salvation.

    Times have changed lately; the values of tolerance and enlightenment, along with the institutions of liberalism and democracy, are looking more shakey than ever they have done before in my lifetime, which is especially shocking in the countries that have liked to see themselves as their principal bastions. It just happens that these orca attacks have coincided with a certain rediscovery of evil, most dramatically illustrated by both the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. The fact of the matter is that the 'your truth and my truth' lark just won't do any more!

    I have been frankly shaken by the realisation of just how right my initial scepticism of the vaccines turned out to be, along with the profoundly troubling corruption of our whole medico/political/information establishment. As for the profound and mendacious malevolence of Mr Putin.... Let me say that I would not hesitate to use a grenade to scare off an attacking orca, and I would not be too bothered if I killed it. I do not believe Christ meant us not to stand up to bullies, and believe that the Catholic teaching about just wars is sound.

    Which said, it has to be remarked that the war in Ukraine, extremely regretable in itself, has yet done an immense favour to the environmental movement, ramming home the necessity of emancipating our economies and way of life from dependence on burning fossil fuels. Come to that, we have also been reminded of the dangers of nuclear power stations. People like Alec and I, who have been chuntering on for some years about, for instance, electrolysers, are suddenly getting the feeling that we may be taken more seriously, and something similar is true for those of us who have been saying that the medical establishment, taken over by commercial interests, is going off the rails, and is due for a complete overhaul.

    There must be a reason why the simple technology of hydrolysers has not been employed long since, for a start by radically reducing both fuel consumption and emissions from internal combustion engines,- and not a reason all that different to why alternatives to vaccinations as treatment for covid were systematically suppressed. One might call it 'capitalism', but I don't. There is no reason why capitalists should not be open and rational about what they do, and there is nothing wrong with making a profit on it. The problem is when the profit becomes the guiding principle, and the pursuit of it causes capitalists to distort and indeed hide the truth about what they are doing, especially when it happens to be against the interests of their customers, which they are there to serve. This is not the inevitable truth about capitalism; it is just greedy badness. It is remarkable how powerful, how obstructive of simple things like treating ill-health or getting around affordably, such people can be, as they hide behind the desperate need for real business to find ways of meeting genuine needs. Capitalism is morally neutral, like a plant or a ship, which is as good or bad as its owners and crew; the trouble is that it is made of money, 'that tainted thing', which so easily becomes an end in itself, a false god. Honesty and transparancy promptly disappear when it does so!

    Vast sums of money are being pushed out by governments and banks to 'mitigate the climate crisis', but how little of it has shown up around us in practical ways actually doing it! Those with access to the money remain more interested in wheeling and dealing on the whole, rather than the uncertain and laborious business of innovating, finding solutions and actually producing things. Meanwhile down-to-earth people have such a struggle to survive that they have little time or energy to even think about such things.

    Well, Alec finally fitted the electroliser in my 08 Citroen Picasso, before I drove it home by way of Bilbao. We had plenty of hydrogen bubbling out of it on Alec's work bench a couple of years ago now, but much time was wasted while I looked around, in vain, for someone to fit it in Ireland. Perhaps we may succeed now that it is in the car and working. I am looking for someone who would like to specialise in this kind of business, but first I suppose I must be able to demonstrate its effectiveness. Alec reckons the one he has in his Transit van improves diesel consumption by over 30%, something like the percentage of European energy that came from Russia before the war, and massively cleans up the exhaust. We believe the hydrogen improves the combustion in the engine so that much more of the energy potential of the fuel is released. I have been carefully recording my petrol consumption/distance travelled since I got the car in March 2020. All I can say so far is that it seems to be doing the job. The car floats along like a boat with the wind behind it, with noticeably less need to put one's foot down on the accelerator. I put exactly 40 litres into the tank very soon after the fuel alarm went off in Bilbao, and am still running on it. When it goes off again, we shall have a pretty good idea how far the 40 litres has taken us; see next blog!

    

    Since the ferry was delayed by weather, I was given a chance to explore Bilbao,- a very

interesting city. Of course I had to see the Guggenheim Museum, a fascinating building, even if one might have reservations about much of the art inside it. It intrigues me, how the loss of the Faith entails the loss of faith in even human attempts at realising rational order; so artists end up talking about dodgy 'Pseud's Corner' stuff like 'Transcending the Spiritual', while they try to reach directly for our subconscious sensibilities and to bypass the conscious mind that they have given up on, not believing the two may be reconciled.

    What a relief to come into St James' Cathedral, with its Madonna who has her eyes wide open, while holding a rose! We all need to take a step backwards, maybe here in Ireland just into the old culture of our Western coastlands, to see if we can knit artistic and technical endeavor together again, work with fun, technology with the love of nature, physical with spiritual life.

    Meanwhile the 'Anna M' is ready for her electric drive, but we are out of capital for now. Alec is trying to find business partners in Portugal, as I am here in Ireland. The vision is simple enough, of a company delivering custom-built electric/hydrogen drives especially for boats, but also vehicles and all kinds of down-to-earth applications. Electrolysers and fuel cells are of particular interest. It would be great to be up and running here in West Clare when they start to bring the mooted off-shore wind power ashore. Whatever the application, it starts with cheap, green electricity,- hence a whole new future for wind power, be it from sails or windmills. It is fun to have such an open field before us!

Just Holding On

 

There is something grimly appropriate about the fact that many gannets are dying, apparently of avian 'flu, and being washed up on our Irish shores,- it being hard not to get depressed about the state of things these days. Yet it was all the more heartening to see a few gannets flying strongly past Loop Head on my Sunday walk yesterday. What's more, though the Gannetsway project of restoring the Anna M has sometimes looked shakey lately, we are still forging ahead.

 

Last time I was in Nazare, a couple of weeks ago, I actually moved aboard; the saloon is quite liveable in now. We also made a start at glassing the hull. The weather was turning rainy, I got a drop of resin in my eye, and most seriously money issues had to be addressed, so it was only a start; I just wanted to get an idea of what exactly is involved. It was successful enough, but it was evident I needed more help as well as materials.

So anyway, I hope to be back on the job in a week or two, and a big push will be under way to get the hull finished before the winter comes. Then we shall be trying to have the Anna M back in the water for next year, and hopefully the big experiment with an electric drive. Plenty of trouble ahead, but if we can overcome adversity in our own little ways, perhaps we can hope that all those people suffering so much more than ourselves will somehow do the same!

Looking forward

Looking aft

1st & 2nd skin

Just Holding On