UKC

Hi All,

Looking into a Devils Slide day -trip next summer, overnight not being an option.

Haven't been for years but know that it can be a tight squeeze between boats some days.

Anybody done it by helicopter? The published flight times don't look helpful being 3 hours apart. Haven't got hold of Landmark Trust yet.

Thanks in advance.

The helicopter only flies in the winter. (October - March)

https://www.landmarktrust.org.uk/lundyisland/staying/staying-on-lundy/trave...

Dates are here, note the 10kg luggage restriction

I would wonder if spending >£300 on two 7 minute flights represents a worthwhile use of money...

Thanks. 80th birthday present so £300 is worth it.

10kg not an issue as only Minimal gear needed.

I saw the winter timetable, but was sure I've seen it flying from Hartland in the summer?

I have heard that it’s possible to organise a small boat out of Clovely - can ask around for details if you’re interested. 

Thanks Mark. Haven't got a date yet but looking for any option that gets us back on the same day. Any info welcome.

I've pointed the guy who has done day trips to Lundy at this thread, hopefully he'll get back to you.

Cheers.

We did it as a day trip from Clovely two years ago.   We even had time for a pint, but it could have been tight had there been traffic on the route.

It was a spare of the moment trip we arranged for the next day while sat in the pub at Hartland Quay after days climbing!

Or carbon.

Really.  OP.  Don't.

You think getting the boat there is much better? I'll give you a little while to do the maths

Let he is without sin etc ....

Most people probably burn more co2 driving to Hartland Point than their share of the emissions from the 7 minute helicopter flight getting to Lundy unless they are local. If we're going to judge everyone who drives to a crag (let alone flies to climb!) then your comment would be fair enough but until then it isn't 

There is light aircraft landing strip too. Depends if you can find anyone who fancies the rabbit holes....

Right, well then, at the time of writing it looks like there are 13 people who have hit the button to say they're too lazy to think about it but believe an old boat is without question and without thought an eco-friendly way to get about, so for the benefit of them and anyone else who automatically equates inconvenient with ecologically sound let's break it down...

Helicopter

The machine pictured on the landmark trust website is a AW109. That will burn about 200kg/hr [1], so 23kg fuel on the 7 minute flight. That's going to produce about 69 kg CO2 [2]. So 9.8 kg per passenger if it's carrying the advertised 7 people.

Boat

The MS Oldenburg is running 2 KT19-M425 engines [3], each burning 79 L/hr [4]. That's 316 litres for the 2 hour trip. That'll be about 265 kg of fuel for about 836 kg of CO2 [2]. Turns out 300 ton boats use a lot of fuel. Who knew?

So, up against a full helicopter, the boat wins environmentally if and only if there are more than 85 people on it. Play with the numbers all you want but it essentially comes down to whether 69/n > 836/m, which quite obviously isn't always going to be the case.

Driving to Hartland

The OP's profile would imply this is a trip from central Scotland, so call it 500 miles. Let's say the birthday boy and the protagonist car share so it's an effective 400 km attributable to each passenger, that gives us 68 kg CO2 [5] per person from the drive down. So S Ramsay wins the thread so far.

Go on then, if you hit the dislike button really hard maybe the way maths works will change and you can take your high horse on board with you without having to worry about that bothersome process of thinking. If that doesn't work, try employing some consideration about these things in future rather than blindly and baselessly worshipping an inconvenient = eco-friendly dogma.

References:

1 - https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5422fe14e5274a131700098f/dft...

2 - https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/co2-emission-fuels-d_1085.html

3 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_Oldenburg

4 - https://www.remipower.com/kta19-m.html

5 - https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-footprint-travel-mode

Good maths and research. However, the boat is going anyway, whereas the helicopter is incremental. 

It would be possible to do the slide in a day off the MS Oldenburg. Some sailings are earlier than others. Say:

7am sailing for a 9.30am arrival

At the slide by 10.30, call it 11am to the bottom.

3 hours to do the route, 2pm. 2/4 are easy ptiches, so the time is 

1.5 hours to the pub and for a pint and a pasty.

3.30pm depart for the landing bay

4pm arrival for a 4.30pm departure. 

Not really a sound argument; You don't get to say "The 747 was going to America anyway so my impact is zero" and get away with it.

If you're going to say the boat's already going but the helicopter wasn't then it would only be right to account for the times it sails empty and attribute a share of the impact of those sailings proportionally to all the passengers. Probably best not to pull at that thread.

The MS Oldenburg carries 267 passengers so around 1/3 of the fuel per passenger? 

This is also ignoring the fact that helicopters use considerably more fuel when taking off and landing, which for a short flight is large percentage of the time.

Play with the numbers all you want but a lot of people would feel uneasy about taking a helicopter flight to climb one route during a climate emergency. 

MS Oldenburg can carry 267 passengers. Which part of "if and only if there are more than 85 people on it" did you struggle with?

Run me through how that works. Or save us time and just admit you made it up and you know nothing about the subject. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_effect_(aerodynamics)

Helicopter runs in summer when the weather is bad and people are due to be leaving the island, but I don't think you can book it. If it was running I'd imagine the weather would be too poor for sea cliff climbing.

I know people that have managed to do the devils slide on a day trip using the Oldenburg, there was a bit of running involved but it is possible.

Or don't go at all for a day trip

I really like what you're doing here, but on the helicopter flight profile you should probably back off. 

The fuel consumption figure is most likely quoted for a typical flight profile. The seven-minute flight is substantially shorter than typical, spends a lot of time in the transitions, and ground effect won't be significant for much of that period. Indeed, there are good safety reasons for NOT hanging around in a flight regime where ground effect is significant - "avoid curve" may not be a term helo pilots recognise because it's more of a flight test phrase, but the principle of limiting the time spent at speed/altitude combinations where an engine failure will kill you is certainly something they'll be familiar with. 

I might not go so far as to double the helo fuel consumption over the baseline figure, but I wouldn't be surprised if that's what the number turned out to be. An actual AW109 or regulated helo transport pilot might be able to add something to this. 

Yes, lots of if's and but's about this, but let's recognise the error bars on some of these calcs almost outweigh the numbers. Not a reason not to do it, it's a good education. 

Y

Why not take a tent and make a couple of days of it. Or at least one night, take all the stress out of it. Also be aware of the bird bans at Lundy over summer although I don't believe that the devil's Slide is generally affected.

As an aside (for the Co2 argument) , a mate of mine swam to Lundy - perhaps you could consider than ultra-eco option

Great post, really interesting and it’s this sort of thing that the debate needs instead of relying on half remembered snippets and out of date info. 

This and your subsequent supercilious posts are definitely the way to bring people around to your side of the debate rather than have them defensively entrench themselves in their existing viewpoint. Sarcasm is always the best way to go on these things. 

Well if there are 85 or fewer passengers there will be plenty of space for you instead of taking a helicopter.

I'm not suggesting any of that. I've enough background to be aware of when and how autorotation works. Just pointing out that "helicopters use considerably more fuel when taking off and landing" is a bit of a stretch. The difference between take off power and straight level flight is nothing like as much as in fixed-wing, which presumably is what jt232 had assumed.

And yeah, it's always an interesting exercise to do these sums. Turns out it can be possible to drive to hartland and fly to Lundy for less carbon than many of our weekend road trips that nobody questions.

Well, in a way it can be better if they do entrench because then they'll maybe do some thinking. Which is a big improvement if they started from a position of "Flying bad. Boat good. Dislike button go brrr"

Both are bad. Thinking about how bad is what we need to encourage.

The Devil is in the detail

You have kindly done the numbers and by your own maths it’s over 3 times the carbon per passenger for a helicopter compared to the boat? 
So flying bad, boat good works out right? 

You could have let that one slide.

Well, no. Ok, you're clearly struggling here. How can I explain this better?

It's the number of passengers that matters. Not the number of empty spaces. If we bolted a thousand empty seats to the bottom of the helicopter it wouldn't improve its eco credentials.

Let's run an example... If there's only one person on the boat, that's 836 kg of CO2 per passenger. So that would be 12 times more than one person in the helicopter. Making sense?

That's seriously impressive.  I know a few folk who've got there under their own steam by kayak.  Probably not much more practical as a suggestion for the OP, though it would at least be possible for someone with the right gear, experience and fitness to do the round trip in a (long!) day carrying everything they need with them.

You'd have a support boat for a big open water swim like that presumably?  There was a suggestion above that for a "money no object" day trip the OP could look at booking a taxi ride in a small boat - perhaps your mate knows the perfect person to ask about that.

I guess I’m struggling with the very arbitrary idea that the helicopter is full and the boat is a third full, for reasons that are entirely unclear? 
 

Would the helicopter use less fuel if it took off from a turntable rotating in the opposite direction to the rotor blades?

It would use less fuel if it was flying in a vacuum

Yeah, I mean, it's pretty straightforward. The boat makes 12 times the CO2 so it needs to be carrying 12 times the number of people to be 'better'. I don't think I can make it any easier for you than that.

I would assume there was a support boat, or at least kayaks. I think he has swam both there and back - but not in the same year. You might just about manage it in a Kayak if you timed the tides so that they were assisting both ways but that doesn't leave any time for climbing!

You can charter boats at Ilfracombe, I know a few can go to Lundy for example this runs a scheduled service which might give you more time on the island:

https://www.ilfracombeseasafari.co.uk/activities/lundy-shuttle/book-now

Thank you for making it so straightforward for me.

I now understand that given an arbitrary and very unlikely set of circumstances a helicopter can be more efficient than a boat. 

 

Good. I think we're there. It's not that intuitive but yes, in the circumstance that on any given day there are fewer than 85 people wanting to get to Lundy, and assuming the same number want to come back, it is actually better for the planet to leave the boat tied up at the dock and use the helicopter. You can tell me how unlikely that is to happen. If the 18000 visitors number on the landmark trust site is right, that suggests the boat is doing good work. 

This is why you have to do the maths.

is that true though? If for example there were 50 passengers, that would require 7 trips of the chopper because the capacity is only 8 or whatever. and those trips would be return trips as it would have to fly back empty to get the next 8 passengers. 

I think in reality the boat runs often anyhow as it takes in supplies for the island but that's another matter entirely

I can't help feeling that this has turned into a philosophy discussion/argument - i.e., based on confused semantics (how do you define 'better' in this context?)

Yes. Looks like it breaks even at 85. But I was basing all this on the one ways because so far it hasn't mattered; you could just double everything for the return leg.

But if everyone only wants to go one way in the morning and one way in the evening and nobody is coming back the other way it changes things predictably.

From above, helicopter is 69 kg CO2 per one way trip, boat 836 kg CO2 per one way trip

So if you're flying it back empty by my reckoning you're doing the planet a favour parking the boat and using the helicopter until there are 42 people to move.

Welcome anyone else joining in with some numbers at any point.

I went with less emitted CO2, because moacs said think of the carbon. So I worked it out. 

Happy to take on board any other criteria. And again, would very much welcome any other objective verification because I feel like I'm the only one who's picked up a calculator.....?

I hadn't really bothered looking at a chart or guidebook, but was thinking perhaps a return trip from Hartland Quay on neaps without tidal assistance (but with a well-planned ferry glide) might be a goer.

What's the potential for a rocky landing at the foot of the climb itself?  On a very calm day with a big tide perhaps it would be possible to do the crossing from Lee Bay in less than 5 hours, rocky landing, couple of hours to do the climb and paddle straight back.
(Ha ha - again, this is not a serious suggestion!)

One of these days I'd really like to paddle to Lundy myself, but I wouldn't dream of aiming to go there and back without at least a single night stay.  It'd be a shame to be there with a kayak in settled weather and not circumnavigate the island with plenty of time/energy to explore!

Oh - I just checked..  Fastest known time for the crossing from Hartland Quay to Lundy is under 2 hrs!  John Willacy (unsurprisingly), 2013.
https://www.performanceseakayak.co.uk/Pages/Crossings2a/crossingsLundyEngla...

That is potentially a very useful top tip for the OP!

Edit to add:
(From that PSK records page.)
Kudos to Nick Arding!  26 July 2014 - 8:25:34hrs to paddle across from Hartland Quay, circumnavigate the island, run up the hill for a quick pint in the Marisco Tavern and paddle back again.

I think the elephant in the room is taking a helicopter to go and climb one of the most underwhelming and overrated rock climbs in the UK

E

I was going to suggest that removing an elephant from the room was one of the rare and arbitrary circumstances where the helicopter was a good alternative. 

Then I followed the invitation to add some numbers, and got mean size of an elephant to be 4,000kg while max external load for an AW109 is 3,200kg. 

It's fine - we can add another arbitrary constraint. Starve the elephant, overtorque the helo, you might get enough fuel in for a seven-minute trip. 

Y

Or you could charter a charterboat with less than 1/2 the horsepower and 1/50th of the weight of the Oldenburg which does the crossing in less than an hour's journey time for significantly reduced fuel consumption.

The boat also carries supplies for the islanders, which might have to be factored into the calculations in some way. You also don’t step into the helicopter where it lives, it has to fly to you from somewhere. Nor does it wait for you all day if you charter it; it flies back to do other stuff and then comes back for you. So while LSR’s sums are interesting there are other considerations.

And however much it might be possible for some people to do DS between MSO sailings, it’s going to be harder for people to do it between boats on their eightieth birthday,

The FKT for kayaking there and back with a pint is interesting. At first sight I thought it was surprisingly slow given that it took me 4.5 hours one way and I’m a useless kayaker. On reflection however the need to catch tides is a limiting factor. Kudos for the trip anyway.

jcm

Sure, the maths is important, but so is the context. 
The boat and helicopter and both profit making enterprises (I assume) so to run at a third capacity would be stupid, they would just run less often. 
So it’s reasonable to assume that both are working at or near their full capacity. 
I would think most people would intuitively think a large boat uses less fuel per passenger than a helicopter. Some people would say that eco-dogma, others would say common sense? Either way, the numbers you supplied prove that to be true by a factor of 3, to claim equivalence would be nuts. 

Dear OP - hope you enjoy the trip for a significant birthday, whether you read this long discussion or not! 

Strong disagree! I was pretty unimpressed by the climbing on Lundy but Devil’s Slide is unique in the UK (to my knowledge) and absolutely brilliant. Hopefully the OP gets it done. 

Dude, you have no idea. The boat is never anywhere near full in the winter.

jcm

Fair enough, I thought it ran march to October though?

... and this is why transport for remote communities tends to be subsidised or regulated to a greater or lesser extent. Regulation something like "you can make good margin on the summer season only as long as you commit to a reasonable winter service." 

Or a bridge gets built (Skye) or (as is happening with remote communities in the US) the greater society decides it's not a priority to look after these people. 

Yes, it might be better to have a smaller/cheaper vessel for the off-peak season - but here's the CalMac problem. Investment money is harder to get than carry-on-burning fuel money (I'm not an accountant) so dreadful old crates carry on for ever. 

Y

No, it runs all year, although less frequently in winter, I think. There are way fewer day trippers but the properties are still rented and of course there are the islanders.

jcm

Not according to the Landmark Trust website:
https://www.landmarktrust.org.uk/lundyisland/staying/staying-on-lundy/trave...
https://www.landmarktrust.org.uk/lundyisland/ms-oldenburg/
https://www.landmarktrust.org.uk/lundyisland/staying/staying-on-lundy/trave...

It's not as simple as that though, is it. The maths itself is pretty simple but the assumptions feeding into it aren't necessarily. Or to the extent that they're simple, they might not be correct.

As various others have pointed out, the question of whether or not the journey still happens if you don't sign up to it is incredibly relevant. As far as I can make out from the website, the boat has a timetable and will largely stick to it (setting aside being stopped by bad weather). The helicopter also has a timetable but will apparently compress multiple journeys into one if it doesn't have enough passengers, so helicopter bookings are adding to the total carbon output in a more direct and substantive way than boat bookings. That's not a complete get-out-of-jail-free card for the boat, of course, it would sail less frequently overall if it got less bookings. But at busy times, the boat will definitely be winning on per-passenger carbon footprint according to your calculations. And at quiet times, there's going to be some floor on the number of sailings needed to keep the island supplied and some extra tourists jumping on isn't going to change the total carbon footprint of the boat that was sailing anyway.

And I don't think being willing to pick up a calculator is the only valid way to have a decent opinion on these things. We live in a complex world where it's sometimes necessary to make even quite important decisions based on simplifying rules of thumb. And as long as those simplifications themselves are backed up by valid data and calculations, they're broadly going to lead to good decisions.

Some rules of thumb that I'd suggest people were applying here in their initial judgements which are generally valid:

• Flying tends to be more polluting than surface transport
• Sharing a vehicle with more people is almost always better
• Joining a scheduled trip is generally better than booking something that causes an extra journey for your needs

Your calculations showed that the gap between the per-person carbon footprint of a fully-loaded boat and helicopter is narrower than most people, including me, would have guessed due to the age and unsuitability of the boat in question. But that doesn't invalidate the need for reasonable rules of thumb for assessing these things and the fact that you're ignoring the question of scheduling means your maths isn't the final word on the subject that you think.

Good answer. This is more like it.

No, it's absolutely not black and white. That's half the point, but that half got lost somewhere.

Well, you have to choose some. I tried to point to the sources so you can all judge mine for yourselves. The question then becomes 'How wrong would they need to be to change the answer?'
Does it matter if it's 50 or 100 people where the flight breaks even? Point is there's some number where it will because the boat isn't carbon neutral, in fact very very far from it. And we haven't even mentioned the other sh*t that comes out of the exhaust yet.

Right, so this is a tricky one. This argument quite rightly gets no traction when applied to long haul flights. But here you've got islanders who need supplies. Could they wait another day for those supplies if there's hardly anyone wanting to travel? Probably. They survive in the winter when the Oldenburg is in refit.
And as you and I both point out, the helicopter can fly once, twice, 3x etc. according to the number of people waiting. And until it makes that 12th trip (6th if coming back empty) it's still not (nominally) emitted as much CO2 as sailing the boat across would have.

In this case the conclusion has to be that the boat is the better option. I mean, if there are 18000 visitors a year and 93 sailings you can make some assumptions about how many fly and sail but it's hard to come to an average of below 85 people on each sailing. So yeah, it's gonna be in the lead for sure. But the hill I'm dying on here is that you don't get to assume that without thinking about it, and it's not as big a lead as you'd think.
In fact it's most likely more efficient to run the boat all summer and push people to the helicopter in winter. Almost as if operating costs are not completely unrelated to these considerations and someone somewhere has thought this through already....

I'd draw some further attention to this one. It's another not so clear case. Yes, it's generally bad to travel by air, but that's because you travel really far by air, not because it's inefficient. Have a look at this https://uk-cms.parkindigo.com/wp-content/uploads/CO2-Emissions-9.png, then by all means throw in some arguments about altitude and radiative forcing etc, but when you look at this per passenger mile, the comparison probably isn't quite what anyone's been led to believe. (By the way, the takeaway here is not that you should fly everywhere, it's that driving solo instead absolutely isn't saving the planet).

Yes. Yes this.

Well, sure, as long as in doing so you haven't encouraged or enabled the scheduling of trips. See long haul flights point above.

Yep. Absolutely. Love this graphic so much I'll link it again: https://uk-cms.parkindigo.com/wp-content/uploads/CO2-Emissions-9.png

The graphic is superb but I has its flaws.

Comparing large motorcycle to short haul first class, as they are next to each other. Making the journey by motorcycle will have a greater carbon footprint than reported due to additional overnight stays, meals out and general welfare requirements, all of which have an impact.

However choosing a road trip over a flight is not usually about eviro impact, more about the journey itself.

Thanks for doing the sums and sharing the graphic.

Good Luck to the OP, both in securing transport for his day out and in wading through all the off topic ramblings.

But this ignores the very different distances travelled by most examples of the modes of transport shown, and thus muddies considerably the question as to which of them gives rise to most CO2 emissions. It doesn't help much in decision making to know that emissions per passenger km are about the same whether you take a long haul flight in economy class or do a journey on a bus. That doesn't convey that one such long haul flight will give rise to as much emission as one passenger would account for in one or probably several years of bus journeys.

A more helpful graphic would compare the emissions for one instance of CO2 emissions by intensive modes of travel against one year's worth by less CO2 intensive modes, or of realistic alternatives for the same journey, such as flying to a nearby destination or going there by train.

It's a really nicely presented graphic, but it does encourage comparisons that aren't necessarily particularly fair. Sure, per person-mile, cars don't come out way ahead of planes as people might assume. But they seem to be assuming all the cars are single occupier, as you've hinted at in your brackets. Pretty fair assumption if you're looking at the morning commute and comparing to a bicycle or a bus for the same journey. Pretty unfair, I would say, if you're comparing to flying for a holiday because the vast majority of people go on holiday with at least one other person, instantly slashing the car's footprint. It's not a criticism of the graphic so much as a limitation of the format because if you tried to include all of that it would get incredibly unwieldy.

In any case, car vs plane isn't the fairest comparison for flying vs surface because it's personal transport vs mass transit. The better comparison would be plane vs train, where train obviously does come out substantially ahead on this graphic's numbers (though the extent of the lead varies dramatically, I've read elsewhere in the past, depending on what assumptions you make about occupancy, for both options, and energy sources, mostly for the train).

I'd stand by it as a rule of thumb. It just needs to be considered alongside other factors rather than taken in isolation. Thinking that you're completely absolved of climate guilt because you travelled a long way but avoided flying isn't realistic. But overstating the extent to which it's only miles that matter and suggesting method is irrelevant will just be used as an excuse to fly anyway when train or well-occupied car would likely have had a significantly lower footprint.

Ooft; the Internet is a tough place!

Snygappa, thanks so much for the link. That is exactly the kind of thing I was hoping to find out. Hopefully the Clovelly/ Ilfracombe options allow a longer day than the Oldenburg.

Apologies to all who are offended. I should admit, I have flown to climb twice in the past (California 1999 and 2005) but have no intention of ever doing so in the future. I will however, as Longsufferingropeholder pointed out, be making the 500 mile drive to visit my elderly patents in Devon.

Enty, I'm sorry you were underwhelmed.

J72, thank you for your goodwishes.

Hats off to the swimmers. I can't, and never have swum a stroke.

I did the Devils slide and Satans slip in a day last year from the Oldenburg…

Got a bit worried and jogged a bit the way home a but actually had time for a 10 min paddle before I needed to get the boat home.

Just the slide? Shouldn’t need a chopper!

Athens is 3200 km from the UK, top end short haul economy flight 100 carbon thingies. Chosen as a long euro flight so close to a bounding case.

Typical yearly driving distance is 12000 miles/19200 km at 200 carbon thingies for a medium petrol car. So 12 flights or 6 return flights are equivalent to annual car use. If you are away for a month, one of your flights is covered by you not driving your car.

Driving to Athens, twice the carbon of flying, plus all the additional incidental carbon.

All this really concludes is that flying is the most appropriate method of travelling long distances when cost, time and carbon are considered. It is not as horrific as some would have us believe.

Alan Moore, I am really really sorry for the way your thread has developed. I will read the Watchmen as penance.

After all that I forgot to say enjoy the trip. To be clear I wasn't judging you; I was drawn into this because someone else was...

Hope you get it done, and go all out to make it the best day it can be.

Hi Alan 

Have climbed with your dad a number of times previously, including most memorably on Harpoon a few years ago, and would be happy to join you to make up numbers and share costs, provided of course this offer is welcome and the day isn’t family only. Sure we could get a group together to keep the environmentalists happy

Good on your dad to try and repeat this outing on his 80th - very impressive. Hope he is well.

Al

I'm enjoying the thought you put into your original response. The sarcasm is childish and I wish you'd give it a rest.

If it's good enough for James McHaffie it's good enough for the rest of us!

You're very sure for something that is so complex and nuanced that none of us really knows much about and have just googled!

https://www.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx

Says .88 tonnes of CO2e for flying and 0.61 tonnes for driving my car, which given the variables is fairly equal I'd say, I'm not sure you could one is much better than the other (unless I have some passengers and then driving definitely looks better).

What is the incidental Carbon you mention? The stops and accommodation? I mean if you fly to Athens you still need accommodations for the days where you're not flying, I don't see what you're saving there.

With regard to the 12,000 annual milage vs 12 flights. I'm not sure that a useful comparison. I mean  who takes 12 flights a year then spends no time driving around at their destination? Most likely people drive 12,000 miles between home and foreign destinations and take a couple(?) of flights a year. Stopping flying would at least cut the carbon of the flights but only be worthwhile if you didn't then drive to your foreign destination.

I mean I think the lesson is that going long distances (spending a long time travelling) is going to mean increasing your carbon footprint unless you do it in a really low carbon way (probably not flying or driving).

Alan, hope you have a good trip, in the grand scheme of things it hardly seems extravagant for your 80th. Have a good one.

Count me in! Haven't seen you for ages, hope all is well!

What it actually concludes is that long distance travel is harmful to the environment and that we should not be frivolous with our travel, it then demonstrates that an environmentally based decision for long distance travel has multiple variables:

Number of people travelling

Proximity of start/ end point to airport

It also makes a strong case for trains if they go where you are going as the fuel usage for trains is far below either (although you get into some funny accounting stuff like Network Rail claiming their power supply for OLE is carbon neutral as they buy their power from EDF who operate nuclear plants which is not quite accurate as nuclear outputs around 50gCO2/kWh due to all of the concrete used in building the plants and the fact that we could shut down some of the fossil fuel plants if the nuclear plants weren't supplying the railway).

In short, don't travel if the activity doesn't necessitate it, if it does try and go by train if solo.

This for me is one of the greatest challenges in dealing with climate change. There is an often mentioned, but little read book nowadays, called how To Win Friends and Influence People,  and the very first chapter says that if you wish to win someone around to your way of thinking, you must never criticize them. Because from their perspective, what they are doing is perfectly justifiable and rational.

And the thing is with the CC debate is that no matter how we sidle around it, ultimately we are going to end up critiquing another persons actions, and not only will they resent this, but on the issue of Carbon output, I very much doubt if many people in the Global North would come away from a forensic examination of their Carbon footprint looking good. 

Making the connection between our personal actions, and the impacts on other people, up to and including death, who are far away in either time or space, is very difficult for us to get our heads around. 

I have no real answers, but this thread has been interesting, particularly as The Guardian has a some really good stuff this week, saying basically that the top 10% in global wealth are being a bit shit with the other 90%

The boat runs March-October for passenger sailings and in the winter only runs about once a month for supplies.

In my experience of going to Lundy for most of the past 20 years, the boat virtually never runs with less than 85 passengers. In early season it’s probably 100-150 people per sailing and in summer every sailing is pretty much booked out.

In response to the OP, I have seen people do the Devils slide in a day on the Oldenburg. You want a day when they sail to/from Bideford since you will get longer on the island (because of tides times crossing the Bideford Bar). Doing it in a day from Ilfracombe is probably a bit of a push.

There are no scheduled helicopter flights March-October (only in case of bad weather).

Did he manage to carry his climbing gear and fit in a quick lap of the Devils Slide? If not, I'm just not impressed, sorry. 

Adam Kucharski's book "The Rules of Contagion" talks about both biological and social contagion and some research done into the art of persuasion. One of the most effective methods studied is to frame your argument in terms to which your audience is more likely to be sympathetic. A lifelong Tory voter is unlikely to be persuaded of the merits of government enforced climate targets. They may be more sympathetic however to the idea of national energy security and preservation of the countryside. 

But taking essential supplies?

Is it?

Most ferries operate as a service to a community, they run nowhere near their capacity most of the time. Holding spare ferries and crews in reserve for what is often a very short peak season is far more expensive than running an 'oversized' ferry out of season or losing the peak business.

I have no idea on what commercial basis a/the helicopter servicing Lundy operates but it won't be on the same basis as a scheduled daily slow boat, that's for sure.

It's largely moot since the ferry will go when it is scheduled to and can whether it has passengers or not, the helo won't. Also since the ferry apparently won't meet the OP's needs it's irrelevant. A chartered boat isn't going to do much better than the helo for fuel burn and I'd suspect would be far less memorable.

While the maths is fun this thread is basically a pretty hypocritical pile on, we all travel at environmental cost to climb. When I switched from climbing to gliding I was spending noticeably less per week on avgas for launches than I had been on petrol to climb but flying bad, right.

jk

Or could end up being spectacularly memorable if the sea state changes for the worst...

I have been on a day  trip to Lundy by boat from Ilfracombe and had plenty of time to solo the Devil's Slide.

Were you 80 at the time? 

Been injured you see 😉

Great, if we get enough we should be able to beat off the eco-warriors easily enough as we board the heli

Well there's something we can all enjoy.

Thanks for the book recommendation, but TBH I have read enough books of the genre, and they just work me up.

For what it's worth I believe people of the global north are getting more individualistic and moving from the Social,  and generally believe that they know what the best way is to run their lives, and would not be told how to by other people and that includes politicians and religious leaders. 

Oddly the guardian moved onto private flights of celebrities today, at least climbing celebrities don't take private flights, a small crumb of comfort 

Read Ben Harris's post above or this https://www.landmarktrust.org.uk/lundyisland/staying/staying-on-lundy/trave...

the helicopter only operates in winter, and Alan wants to go in summer.

When were you planning on doing this? Here's another thought:

https://www.bodminairfield.com/events/lundy-island-fly-in-out-august-1st/ 

You might find someone with a couple empty seats and willing to do a favour for an 80th birthday who can get you at least one way at a time that makes things less rushed. 

Thanks! Have a year to fit it in so pretty flexible..

Looks like August 4th could be a goer then. Low tide ~13:00 BST. If nothing else you'd be there to see the fly in. 

The helicopter definitely operates in Summer. You've just linked the 'Winter timetable'

On my to do list, 

Here's the Timetable for 2024.

I linked to the 'Travelling to Lundy' page.

Fair enough but it was an option the last time we went.

Interesting.  With the car figures, is it assuming the car is single occupant? If so then filling a car with people is actually quite reasonable.  Also, what are the calculations on the RO-PAX ferry, because many will be carrying freight and that will be a significant portion of the CO2 footprint.

I'm pretty sure that it only operates in Summer on days when the MS Oldenburg can't because of sea conditions. And not always then, as our friends found out that the helicopter was unavailable becuase of maintenance. 

All this is in the docs in the "sources" link at the bottom. But on short i) yes, and ii) they've tried to account for that.

I was stranded for an extra two days on Lundy in September this year due to bad weather and there was definitely no helicopter option available. 

A member of the Lundy volunteer team told us that they don't actually have an agreement or contract with any helicopter company and it is just a case of ringing up the various providers to see if any have availability to take on the work.

What a fab way to celebrate your Dad's 80th!  I hope the day goes well.

(Also I think I need to up my game - I celebrated my own Dad's 80th with him at Kendal Wall 😂) 

While I do appreciate you doing the numbers, perhaps you should admit you know nothing about the subject.

A helicopter fuel consumption is like an inverted shallow bell curve – it's nearly highest at take‑off and hover, because of the downwash from the rotor pushing down on the body. Ground effect only helps a little, and only just above the ground (hence the name). Then it reduces with forward speed, as the downwash falls behind the craft, but then it increases again up to the maximum forward speed, as drag forces take over.

So if you really want to be bloody nitpicking, learn the basics first, instead of just googling random terms and being an "expert".

Still, I might agree with the gist of your post. Just don't try feign expertise, it looks bad for the rest of your somewhat valid arguments.

To the OP, hope they enjoy the trip however they get there, sounds like an awesome day out for 80th birthday!

Yes, I'm aware of all that, thanks for the patronising reply.
I'm not claiming to be an "expert" but I know enough to say "helicopters use considerably more fuel when taking off and landing" is naive at best, and probably closer to absolute bollocks. Maybe if the claim was 10-15% I'd have gone along with it. I wasn't planning to get into a big diatribe over it so just linked something simple to show the comment clearly hadn't been thought through. If you're an "expert" I'll let you try to explain translational lift to jt232 if you want, but I wasn't sure this audience really cared that much.

The 200 kg/hr figure is what the air ambulance pilot in the linked report was using for planning purposes, for an air ambulance. So if you think their figures are unsuitable for the purposes of this application, let me know a better number and we can tweak the end result.

For anyone interested, here are the actual curves for the actual helicopter we were on about, starting about page 9-5:

https://www.academia.edu/33414794/ROTORCRAFT_FLIGHT_MANUAL_AW109SP_AW109SP_...

On pages 9-8 and 9-14 you'll see that at both sea level and 2000 ft, at 20C fuel burn is minumum at 60-80 kts. Let's say we're 2600kg, you're at ~70-75% torque at recommended cruise of 140-150 kts, and at about the same at 0 kts, but down to ~40% ish (150 kg/hr) at approach speeds. Like the speeds you be flying at doing what as jt argued "for a short flight is large percentage of the time". You can tell me how long you think you spend manouvring at lower speeds compared to in the cruise and hovering.

The chart on page 9-70 would imply that for the same conditions you can hover with 60-65% (about 190 kg/hr) in ground effect and 70-75% (about 210 kg/hr) at 60 ft. 100% torque is 260 kg/hr, so at what point in the flight and for how long will you be using "considerably more fuel"?

So... them's the best facts I can come up with. If you have others, that's great, please show them. But I'm sticking with 200 kg/hr and if you think I'm wrong to, let me know why you think that's the case. 
Or just use the buttons to demonstrate the value folks round here put on going to the trouble of researching actual facts and figures.

Getting annoyed at someone giving you a patronising reply in this thread, and especially in the context of the post of yours that he was responding to... it's an interesting choice.

You might well know your helicopters, and it might well be true that they don't use substantial extra fuel for taking off, but nobody here knows your qualifications, and posting a link to an article about ground effect clearly proved nothing.

Fair.
I'm ready to admit it's been a bit frustrating, this one. From my POV:
Me irt Moacs: Do you think the boat is much better? (massive pile of dislikes)
Me: ok, well, here's how the two compare (fairly well received but clearly not what ~20 people wanted to hear)
jt: you're wrong because of a falsehood I've assumed about helicopters because I was told it in the context of planes
me: Um, I don't think I am.... here's a simple link to something very basic you might not have considered
jt: yeah you are because the boat is always full
me: [turning up the sarcasm now] well I gave you the numbers, you can divide them youself (massive pile of dislikes)
Yanchik: I'm assuming that's the extent of your knowldge so shut up because you don't understand helicopters (by the way, manual linked above shows 100% torque is 260 kg/hr so no, you wouldn't double it even if you were hauling Dumbo) (massive pile of likes)
jt: I still think you should have done the maths where the boat is always full
me: [sarcasm up to 11 now] I mean, it's just a multiple. Come on dude. You can manage this. (pile of dislikes)
...lots of posts...
Frank R: You don't know what you're talking about because I have decided the most advanced concept you are aware of is ground effect and I know a whole one more thing than that (stack of likes)
me: Ok, here's the goddamn flight manual with the exact figures that prove I was right all along. You liked verifiable data back up the thread, didn't you? Here, have some more data. What do you lot want from me? (dislikes piling up fast)

So here we are. Will I do it again? Probably.

Do I feel sorry for the OP? Very much yes.

but what if the helicopter is on a treadmill?

In that case I guess I'd look up the relevant data and present it with traceable references to lay out what happens with numbers to support it, and someone would be along shortly afterwards to tell me I don't know what I'm talking about and I'm wrong because they said so, then I'd invite them to provide some evidence to support their position, which wouldn't be forthcoming, then everyone would go back to following their misguided intuition and be aghast when I didn't express gratitude for their input. 

But what if the boat is on a treadmill?

It can get like that using the sea kayak approach if you don’t quite get your tidal planning right

The obvious answer to all of this is to fit a helipad onto the Oldenburg. 

By all means do it again, but see if you can learn something about reading the room, building a compelling argument, avoidance/limitation of false precision and updating your views as you learn from others. It's a supportive suggestion in the hope something good can be extracted from the emotional noise. 

I'm employed to provide aerospace/aviation expertise, including numerical estimates and modelling to a substantial organisation that consults across transportation. That includes a well-developed STFU skill. 

Y

Why?

Well in that case if you're the expert maybe instead of telling me to "back off" you could have provided better figures? You went with "The fuel consumption figure is most likely quoted for a typical flight profile." rather than checking what it's actually from and looking at the credibility of the link I pointed to. Then you suggested it could be double the figure i went with, which according to the flight manual is completely implausible. 
Maybe instead of going with STFU as a 'compelling argument' you could update my views by pointing out which of the sources I cited is wrong. Was it the pilot's planning estimate you disagree with? Or the flight manual? Are you such an expert that your "STFU" overrides the documentation?
Where did you think the false precision was in going with the 200 kg/hr number from the report I cited? Seems a nice round number to me.
As I asked above, please answer me this: for this rough estimate of relative carbon impact of the two means of transport, what number would you like me to use?

I don't owe you an education. I don't choose to spend a great deal of time going down semi-relevant internet argument rabbit holes. If I do engage with your argument, I'll do it on my terms rather than take your guidance about what actually matters. 

As it happens I don't necessarily disagree with 200kg/hour. I do know that neither you, I or the other protagonist who joined in know enough about helicopter operations or the specifics of the Lundy operation for a detailed discussion to be worthwhile. I can assure you that double the number is far from "completely impossible." Manufacturer vs real world ? Spillage ? Engine start ? Warmup time ? Frequency of engine washes ? Engine maintenance policy & half-life assumptions ? Actual flight profile rather than your half-baked assumption ? Airframe condition ? Pilot skill and preference ? Time in flight against time running ? I could be right, you could be right. I have folks I can call if I need something better, but I'll keep that for professional life. And that's why I suggested you back off - get on your high horse by all means, I understand that the internet doesn't communicate "gentle suggestion" very well. 

Meanwhile the thread returned to the big themes that matter to a comparison of bespoke vs public transport, ie load factor is crucial, incremental fuel burn requires justification (no value judgement from me here) over fuel burn that was going to happen anyway, and whichever way you cut it, aviation burns a lotta carbon, especially if vertical takeoff is required. Note I didn't say "aviation bad", but there's a good reason for that thought to be widespread. 

My approach was to join in if I felt I could actually add a bit of light or warmth. I appreciated your efforts at light. 

Y

Response was to your original unedited version so may not be coherent read against the update. 

Y

So what I'm hearing is "I'm right you're wrong" and no willingness to even acknowledge the documentation. I can't really counter that. Only now you're saying you never even thought I was wrong...

The AW109 flight manual has 100% torque at 260 kg/hr so if you know of a pilot that can get one to burn 400 it would be interesting to hear about.

OR put massive propellers and a keel on the helicopter

And what if Lundy is on a treadmill?

As per UKC norm this thread has descended into sanctimonious empty tokenism. In the grand scheme of an individual’s rare or once in a lifetime Lundy trip impact on their annual of lifetime CO2 emissions is going to be negligible. Much more significant is annual commuting to work/climbing wall/crag, flights to Euro or further holiday destinations, home space heating, what temperature you do you laundry, food miles, amount of stuff bought that is made in China, etc.

Enjoy Lundy and I hope the weather is good for you

And it's now clear the helicopter and boat don't even run at the same time. I just disagree it's a UKC norm, it's the general norm for our times!

The levels of zoomed in micro debate on erroneous points of detail that entirely miss the big picture discussion (which itself has no place in this thread anyway!) is certainly a UKC/UKH speciality 

"avoid curve" IS a term HELICOPTER pilots recognise <snipped bollocks>, <snipped> the principle of AVOIDING speed/altitude combinations where an engine failure will kill you is certainly something they'll be familiar with

Corrected that for you, I'm not sure what books you read about helicoptering.  Former helicopter instructor here...

Back to the point.  If the CO2 emissions is a concern, don't go for the day.  If the limited time to get to Devil's Slide, ab down, climb back up and get back is a concern, don't go.

My way - go for a few days, take the boat, camp if you have to, enjoy at your leisure.

Cool, thanks. No argument here. I knew the principle would be well-understood, but I had no knowledge of whether that term itself would be used - I only came across it in a flight test organisation I worked on and in that context. 

As you've shown, a person can get properly "told" if they don't use the correct in-group terminology, whether or not they know what they're talking about. Try referring to holds as "grips" sometime ? 

Yes, I've done a bit of VTOL/STOVL work, but oddly, relatively little with helos. So there's a bit of book-learning and a small amount of idiosyncratic P1 time. Many of the books being for my Aerospace Engineering degree back in the day. We all bring something, right ? 

Y

How about pinchgrips?

This thread sent me down a different rabbit hole of thought.

Hope I never have to go on a helicopter, they unnerve me compared to things with non-spinning wings.  Still, better than the American tilt rotor I suppose.

What amazes me is that evolution has learnt about rotatory flight with trees like the sycamore using an auto-rotating wing to increase the wind driven range of seed dispersal.

Most times of animal life (excluding micro animals) have hit upon powered or unpowered flight, but never with a rotary wing.  I’m imaging a sort of flying haggis that extends a giant, light wing to one side, counterbalanced by the mass of the balled up haggis closer to the centre mass.  Any mad scientists out there who could genetically engineer some test samples? 

There was a fox that managed it in the early 90s. His hedgehog friend was fairly jealous if I remember correctly.

Just when you think it's done this thread takes off again!

I still disagree. I think what we have at UKC is actually a relatively unusual overlap of 'Venn diagram' groups. There are no shortage of forum on the internet where folks get into the detail in the style you describe..... it's that UKC also attracts folks who wouldn't normally see that.

Isn't it just a matter of your frame of reference? An albatross gliding in a straight path or an autorotating samara (winged seed), their aerofoil works mostly the same way from its point of view.

The biggest reason birds or bats don't spin like the seeds do is probably just so they won't get a massive headache

A pity, though, as I'd really like to see a flying, one‑winged haggis...

He might have learned that from Dick Dastardly's sidekick Muttley. 🙂

It’s been an interesting read - but I feel a little for the OP who was asking a question not related to the debate between the sustainability of helicopter or boat travel 

Last sighting on St Kilda, 1813. Two subspecies which used to fly in opposite directions around the stacks.

By established custom and practice, helicopters on UKC threads are always on turntables. 

It's planes that belong on treadmills.

As you were.

Yes - but consider how much Alan's horizons have been broadened.