Backbone > Life in the Balance
Silence Speaks Louder than Motors
By Susan Piperato

Last summer, after living most of my life near the Hudson River, I at last immersed myself in its mighty waters. I'd had my native birthright challenged by a recent New York City transplant who told me being born here doesn't count when it comes to having a true sense of this place. It's only the people who know the river intimately, he insisted, who truly belong-otherwise, it's like living in New York without ever riding the subway. But when I was growing up the Hudson was an oil slick that no one of right mind would put a toe into. It was something you looked at from a distance, with sadness and disgust. Although I'd watched it grow cleaner and celebrated the decision to rid the river of pcbs, somehow I'd never lost the image of the river as off-limits. However, serendipitously, last summer I was also lucky enough to befriend a woman who keeps a sailboat docked in Saugerties, and even luckier to be invited aboard.

For my maiden voyage on the Hudson we headed out past the Saugerties Lighthouse, then down toward Kingston's Rondout. The afternoon was dreamlike and serene despite (or perhaps because of) the heat. After sailing out to my friend Lynn's favorite spot, we anchored and jumped straight in. The water was surprisingly cold for such a hot day, and felt clean and silken. We stayed in as long as we could stand the cold, and then climbed back into the boat to relax on the deck in the sun. With my eyes closed, I lay still, relishing the sun and the feeling of being rocked by soft, late-afternoon waves as we floated for a time within that magical space where the dark, rushing water meets the hazy, silver sky.

It was an exquisite moment. Then just as I began to drift out of consciousness, the sounds of motors ripped through my state of reverie and set the boat shaking, as the wakes going in all directions jostled, rather than rocked us. Suddenly, it had become rush hour on the Hudson. There were boats, and their wakes, heading in all directions. Although we'd planned to sail back, we ended up starting up the outboard motor just to get out of the way.

Like virtually every major river throughout this country, the American Heritage-designated Hudson has been polluted by a multitude of sources. Although river pollution caused by pleasure boats pales in comparison to other types of pollution, such as the pcbs put into the river by General Electric, even the discharges and emissions from small vessels are harmful. As so often happens when human beings want to connect with nature, pleasure boaters don't intend to inflict harm on the waters they love, but they do nonetheless-similar to taking the car out for a drive in the country. However, marine pollution has reached such alarming levels that gasoline and diesel boats are being banned from more and more lakes and waterways across the country. Although the Hudson has a 153-mile no-sewage-discharge zone, the proliferation of pleasure boats for river cruises, fishing, sightseeing, and waterskiing still presents problems of water, noise, and air pollution-not to mention traffic jams. Throughout New York momentum is gathering on the part of environmental organizations and citizens' groups that are working to make several precious waterways, including the Hudson, pleasure boat-free in favor of a return to the exclusive use of silent and pollution-free paddleboats.

Boat-builder Chuck Houghton believes that limiting the waterways to paddleboats is more idealistic than it is practical. However, as the ceo of Electric Launch Company, Inc. (Elco), he is committed to making lakes and rivers completely free of pleasure boat pollution by designing and building, converting and generally "reintroducing" electric-drive boats throughout the world. Any pleasure boat can be electric-powered, he says, and especially now, "it just makes sense." But Houghton is quick to point out that returning to the electric-powered motor boat is hardly an original idea. In the late 1800s, he says, electric recreational boats outnumbered steam and gasoline combined. Eventually, the gasoline engine won out because it allowed boaters to go faster and farther.

"Now I feel we're going back to what we had, because we have to," Houghton says. "You can see it in the auto industry with the hybrid cars. Honda and Toyota can't make them fast enough. I think we'll eventually settle on hybrid boats. It's ironic."

But what's even more ironic than this reemergence of old-fashioned ideas-and ideals-is the history of Elco, which itself is reemerging. "We're a 111-year-old startup," Houghton says, and his role model is Henry Ford. "He said about the Model T, 'You can have any color, as long as it's black,' which was the color of the industrial age," Houghton explains. "We say, 'You can have any color, as long as it's green,' because it's the environmental age." In 1893, Houghton's great-grandfather, "a robber baron, but a nice robber baron," attended the Chicago World's Fair, which featured Elco boat rides. Houghton's great-grandfather's paid a quarter for a ride, and immediately afterward paid $1,736 to order one to be delivered to his summer home in Lake George. His neighbors all had to have one, too, so by the time Houghton, who's 58, was growing up there, he says, "I thought electric boats were normal." In 1989 Houghton brought the woman he was dating in Manhattan to Lake George to propose to her. "I took her out on our grand boat, which my family still had, and by golly, she said yes," he says. "Then I was trying to figure out what I could get her for a wedding present, and all she could talk about was that boat. So I found Elco in Highland and bought her a boat."

At his 25th class reunion at Harvard in 1991, Houghton met a friend he hadn't seen since college and told him about the boat. By then the Elco factory was dormant and the company was for sale. Houghton, his brother Peter, and friends bought the company and Houghton became its president. "I've never worked harder, and I've never believed more in anything than what we're doing for the environment," he says. "I've spent 50 years at Lake George watching the water deteriorate, largely due to outboard motors and septic problems. Thirty percent of all the oil and gas that goes in the front end of an outboard motor comes out the back end, unused. My brother Peter and I are committed to Elco; we've decided we have to make a difference."

So, who's buying Elco? According to Houghton, the answer is yet another irony. "We're selling mostly in Canada," he says. "The government there leads by example. In America the biggest polluter of all is the current government, undoing all the environmental laws Clinton put into place. Canada is always trying new things out in the parks system and saying there's got to be a better way." In contrast, Houghton says, Americans "tend to buy electric boats for three reasons: they're quiet; their environmental advantages are recognized; and, I hate to admit this, but a lot of people buy pretty canopies that happen to have electric boats underneath them."

To spread the word about pleasure boat pollution and the advantages of electric boats, and to allow as many people as possible to experience the pleasure of electric boating, the Houghtons have taken Elco boats to public places throughout the East Coast. Electric boats currently run from April to November in Brooklyn's Prospect Park, Long Island, and Saranac Lake, and year-round in Fort Meyers, Florida, providing rides for the general public and school kids. "It's a community service," Houghton says. "I estimate that with all of our boats out, 10,000 people a month experience an Elco boat. In February alone, the Fort Meyers boat carried 3,000 people."

Electric boats have several advantages: they're cleaner, lower-maintenance, more durable, and cheaper to run. They also lack vibrations, and can go all day at about the same speeds as outboard boats, but need recharging overnight. But what Houghton says he notices people really appreciate about the boats is their absolute silence. "There is no sound as you move away from the dock," he says. "My captains in Prospect Park take groups of 15 high-energy kids out seven days a week, and they've never once had to say 'be quiet.' Of all the things I've experienced at Elco, that's had the most meaning for me. Whether it's a captain of industry or a two-year-old on the boat, they sit absolutely still. They get it. The boats are a point of balance, an introduction to the wilderness."