Sustainable boats

This may seem like a thread for the boatbuilding threads, and there was a similar thread there 4 years ago (now closed)...

How can we keep doing what we love doing - facing oil termination, deforestation, greenhouse gas limits, waste and recycling controls...

Today I discovered a boat that has taken these challenges seriously:
http://www.pacificproa.nl/

The fact it is a multi is not immediately relevant - or is it? Less materials, no lead - these must be significant, on reflection.

Anybody else know of - or tried themselves - alternative materials selected for their low ecological impact (or ethical reasons like respect for indigenous forest owners)?

 

Gday

I always use Hoop Pine ply as it is sustainable. I don't know about Gaia's dream being sustainable - it is a big boat still. She still has 9 tons of stuff in her. I also have severe reservations about biofuels as they stand at the moment - they started out with promise but orangutan habitat destruction caused by palm oil and food price hikes has caused them to burn less brightly in the eyes of greenies.

Probably the best is to sail a smaller boat - reduce. Fix up an oldie - reuse. I don't get recycling yet - it will take a smartie to work out what to do with an old glass boat.

 

It is a big boat, but if that size has a purpose, that's not a bad thing. Like extended research trips etc. only problem there would be the lack of accommodation? But in general terms, Reduce is always the first step, be it boats, houses, whatever.

Biofuels - I agree, if the oil is virgin. I ran a couple of vehicles on recycled cooking oil for a while - lovely fuel in many ways, especially the lack of black smoke and the smell! Needs to be stored properly, but that's another story! But in reality, there will never be enough recycled cooking to power a significant number of vehicles or vessels, so it's a small part of an interim answer. (thus my interest in solar power).

Recycling? Mmmm - fibreglass has big problems there. I am looking at making a small foam thingymejig now (not a boat), and finding non-oil based recyclable products is a challenge (balsa core ok, but the resin??).

Love Hoop Pine! Extended by A's dagger boards with it, made furniture with it, decks, you name it. Pity it's not a Class 1 timber though.

 

The problem with recycling fiberglass is fashion. The boats last so long that they outlive their appeal. If you don't mind a boat looking old then it is not a bad material.

 

I think you're talking about reuse there, and not recycling. Recycling would be to scrap the old hull down to base components and reuse the materials as part of new fabrication. Composite materials have a distinct disadvantage in this field due to the components having a tight bonding with often very dissimilar materials, which makes reclamation of a single component next to impossible in many cases.

I have seen proposals for shearing old fiberglass components into small pieces, and using them as part of a stabilization layer in land reclamation projects. It would require several hundred tonnes of old, other wise useless pieces of fiberglass per acre of reclaimed land.

 

I agree with Gonzo.

What is more likely to change is style and trends. Nothing stops one from stripping an old boat and redo the interior instead of scrapping the whole boat on the grounds of 'old'.

I would make the wild comment that fiberglass hulls are more sustainable than most other materials. If it hasn't been abused it will probably live close to forever with almost no maintenance.

I see no point in trying to recycle somethig that is usable. If a boat is given a face lift then one can look at recycling the parts that gets removed.

The problem with recycling is always the quantity. Quantities would have to be large to sustain recycling, and I don't see that much material from boats to sustain such an undertaking.

Anyone wanting to start such an industry has a few problems to cope with, one is how to get the material to a central place and hand in hand goes the costs of doing so, apart from the machinery that is capable of processing the materials.

Will the end product be worth the cost.

 

Fibreglass needs maintenance, Fanie, otherwise osmosis will kill it. And eventually stress will cause fracture, but that is at the extreme end of hard use or long life.

Ok - so we have conquered what to do with old fibreglass hulls - keep using and refurbing them.

But how do we build new high performance lightweight structures when oil becomes as expensive as Unobtanium? Core material will always be available from balsa and pawlonia, and pawlonia makes great structural members on its own if stress isn't too high and the need for lightweight not too great. But will that keep us happy, without still needing something like a fibre cloth and resin to form high stress skins?

 

Well,
Paulownia tomentosa bears the highest stress of all core materials!

 

I think over time more and more hi tech material will begin to emerge. What we have available currently is a far cry from what can be achieved.

Who knows, we may well see a synthetic super light virtually unbreakable scratch resistant photo voltaic material that is UV and most anything else resitant that generates it's own power for propulsion and other electrical demands.

I know what you want to think. That's what they told the Wright bro's too

We don't always see the development of things, but just check what was available a few years back vs now.

So I would suggest just wait a few centuries more and we will have less problems, and we will have more problems

 

GRP does have a life span. It can take so many load cycles, before it breaks down.

I've stripped 'glass hulls back to the hull shell on several occasions and made completely different boats from them. Once the deck cap and liner are off, you have an open book to work with. I did this with a 65' yacht once too, but most commonly with trailer craft. The last was a cute harbor launch from an early 70's sailor. It has a small inboard, cedar seating for a crowd and makes no fuss underway. This is recycling too.

My other have suggests she's recycling by tolerating me and she may have some valid points to make in this regard.

 

Have recently planted 2 of these - currently around 2.5m each - not intended for any future materials but I'm told they are extremely fast growing. I'll be watching them mature with interest now though as I scheme up things to build with when I retire!

 

I guess it's ok as long as she doesn't recycle you as compost

 

Fanie said: "That's what they told the Wright bro's too
We don't always see the development of things, but just check what was available a few years back vs now."

Too true, and I am always ready to try a new idea, sometimes to my own detriment! But it's always worth a try - how else do we move forward?

The thought I subsequently had about Gaia's Dream was a seed prototype of a small commercial vessel. Running big container ships and freighters will be uneconomical for low-value goods once oil becomes expensive. What then? We are probably all agreed that a combination of yet-to-be-developed technologies based on a mix of solar power, wind, and hydrogen fuel cells (start another thread? - I love this discussion!) but will ships get smaller (also forcing a reduction in volumes of goods exported) and will they be built of something other than steel? Steel may still be relatively cheap in the medium term due to ongoing relatively cheap baseload power from a mix of sources, except for additional costs from carbon taxing or trading, however that finally takes shape to provide effective limits on emissions.

So - two issues to consider: smaller recreation boatbuilding, and larger vessels.

 

Hi Bad Dog,

To highlight something you start the line with QUOTE in square brackets and end with /QUOTE in square brackets, or do it in the advanced edit mode.

 

...as in

?

( [ Quote ] quoted text [ /quote ] without the spaces )