The Sail Transportation Network was originally an idea promoted by Jan Lundberg as early as 2000. As more and more people became interested in peak oil and depletion responses, Dmitry Orlov also became interested in the possibilities for sail and wrote about that in an article called “The New Age of Sail“.

Genesis

Yet, despite a lot of interest and great ideas, no real sailing had begun until the idea was taken up by our own Dave Reid. Dave spent much of 2008 studying the sail transport model to see if it could become a viable business. Dave tried to figure out what the price of oil would have to be in order to make sail transport a viable business option for transporting organic produce from local area farms to people in Seattle.

Oil prices would be the key, since he would be in competition with truckers that might be able to take loads from the Kitsap Peninsula to Seattle for much less money using cheap petroleum fuels. His expectation was that despite poor prospects now, peak oil almost guaranteed future profitability improvements as fuel costs rose for trucking. To his surprise, the data he collected showed that he could already cover costs and pay himself a small wage right now.

With 5 trial runs under his belt [as of January 2009], including sailing through snow, Dave is preparing for the sailor’s life. His plans include an end to his day job as an engineer, devoting his full attention to developing the sail transport concept into a viable business that serves local people with local product, and all without any petroleum dependency. Jan Lundberg recently interviewed Dave about his progress, including more photos of what has been happening. With additional support from Sustainable Ballard, Dave’s trips have been more successful each time he goes out.

Approach to the Issues

Dave has always believed that supply lines and local trade would be key to confronting the energy crisis. Most people who find out about peak oil want to pass laws or write letters, but the most productive thing we can do is start a local economy that relies on local resources. When energy gets expensive and/or scarce, we’ll have to work a lot harder for the things we get to enjoy, and if we don’t produce those things locally ourselves, we may not get to enjoy consuming them at all.

Opportunities

Dave’s success with the Sail Transportation outing shows what can be done when we dedicate ourselves to building advance responses to the collapse and failure of the global industrial economy. The more local people can get started on similar projects, the better. Success here means we’ve found ways to turn our mental hard work into real hard work with physical results. At that point, our efforts at change begin to look like they might really be able to provide us a more secure and manageable future.