Green Cruiser 50

If you need a little power plant, it's not so green. As says Apex1 what is green in a mass of lead moving with a very complicate system which, if broken, you are toast in the middle of the ocean. A cruising boat can’t just pull over at a garage station when something go wrong. As for the grounding and hitting the bottom at low tide, which happens very often, I don’t think that a very expensive two tons lead on track will survive. A good, solid, plainly design keel ballast, tacking in consideration of what can really happens to a cruiser, will.
By cruising you learn a lot.
As for green, it is use all the time for marketing purpose. It’s over rated and over used. Every thing is green now, it is the latest trendy word. But nothing essentially is green in this design, probably less green than a 1920 cruiser without engine and alcohol stove, built simply carvel fashion with domestic wood.

 

Yaahh, think it´s the bamboo that makes it green. That bamboo, grown in large plantations in China, well known for their environmental friendly (green) practices. Glued together with green Epoxy?
Nahh, the only green thing here: They try to sell it to the GREEN people!

Regards
Richard

 

The designers have susbstituted a bio-based renewable resource, bamboo fibers, for the fiberglass component in the composite laminate. This is a product that, potentially, has a great future in composite structures, takes less energy to produce than does fiberglass and regrows to maturity at an alarming rate once harvested.

Now, if the epoxy, itself, were to be derived from a suitable, bio-based source such as soy, we'd really begin to see a very nice reduction in petro-chemistry derived materials. There are adhesives on the market and also in further development that have these characteristics. Just a little scratching around, fellas, will lead you to the topics.

Other, smaller gains can be made within the cabin structure where soy based foams can be used along with soy adhesives for the construction of the furniture and the bulkheads. There is a fairly long list of possible improvements that take us away from the oil industry, if only the boat building world would press forward to adopt the potential.

I'll bet that one of the considerations for a boat of this type of build philosophy is the very strong reality that markets just don't respond to wholesale changes in structural type. They need to be eased into the potential in stages, if one really wishes to transform a mind set. The boating industry and its coupled marketplace are especially immersed in that process of being slow to change. Yes, there are a few cutting edge practitioners who could absorb all these possible ideas in one single effort, but the market for those very special people is incredibly small and to hit them all with one initial effort is impossible. Better to not rush it, take a look at the response (such as the stuff posted on these pages) and formulate the next stage of the advance based on what is learned.

I see this boat as a very interesting step in that direction. The designers should be recognized for that effort, regardless of the thinking as it applies to the keel setup. To me, the keel is a separate argument that should be removed from the over-arching presentation of the boat as a complete concept.

 

I don't know about the boatbuilding industry as a whole, but I would GLADLY accept using all-renewable materials in a boat, all at once, if the renewables were made as cheap, and had the same (ora at least similar) strength!

Unfortunately, as I see it, Hemp cloth (similar strength to E-glass by volume, slightly better by weight) is $24/yd while I can buy E-glass in a RANGE of weights for under $4/yd ... so when it comes to costing a project, I can build 6x the boat in e-glass that I can in hemp fabric. Now, I'm all for "going green," but it's simply bad business to pay 6x as much for materials that are less than 1.5x as good.

 

Is it possible to provide some deeper insight into the technical properties of the bamboo fibers in comparison with glass?

Regards
Richard

 

Chris,

I found some info on "glassing" with bamboo cloth here...it's a surfboard site, but the info should translate pretty well for us.

http://www.greenlightsurfsupply.com/glassing.html

EDIT: Just checked their pricing...their bamboo "fiberglassing" fabric is 60" wide & they're selling it for $5.00/foot ($15/yd); at the same strength as 4oz e-glass.....EXPENSIVE!!!

 

But GREEN ROB, green.

 

That's good... it's a start in the right direction. You do, however, recognize that you are one of the small percentage mentioned above and you're not at all common. ;-)

Not necessarily bad business if you also factor for the host of intangibles that are directly associated.

Let’s say you buy a bike from the US, rather than a much less expensive version from China. This is assuming that the Chinese and US versions are equal in materials and build quality. ( in spite of the typical reports, I have seen some really well-made stuff out of China) When you purchase this US made bike, you pay the owner and all his employees.

Well, making that locally beneficial purchase is very similar to the investment in Green products, in that it would apply to the potential betterment of the planet. We're not going to see huge changes to our little blue ball in the beginning of the process. It’s going to take some time to be widespread and effective on a large scale. We are going to see, every once in awhile, a so-called Green operation that is not at all Green. That's inevitable with any new product intro, especially one with enormous potential financial rewards. But, that is not the pulse of the change.

Prices will be higher in the beginning, as you currently see, but as the product use increases, so will the numbers of those supplying the product. With that, will come pricing decreases as competitive energies strive to deliver in the marketplace ahead of the rest. If you perceive the changeover as an overall positive part which you can play for the greater good of all of us, then the expense at the beginning should be seen as an investment in your future. God knows that we've all squandered sums of money on less important "excursions" in our lifetimes.

These are interesting times in the world of boat building and design. Many new materials and products are likely to be developed, as well as many new process methods for making the best use of those new materials and products.

 

although the green moniker has been thoughtfully adulterated by the advertising world ( as is the word performance IMHO ) I think it important to continue and accelerate a movement to more sustainable life styles

I am certainly not well versed enough to comment on the keel design but this bit about more friendly epoxies sure caught my interest

as did the bits about reliability

Ill be building a comfortable sized coaster eventually to retire on and it will be as Chris pointed out of a more traditional design
and out of wood instead of some high embodied energy material

also, as I'm not to into swimming in rough seas it will have a simple and shallow keel design

but the epoxy is a huge concern for me
while Im over here hugging a tree Im thinkin that I dont want to lather bisphenal A all over myself and go sailing

so Ive been looking into what my alternatives are for epoxy in cold molding

not to many

resourcinal is even worse as it bleeds formaldehyde for about a hundred years

thing about that keel for me is exactly what I think T said which is that although Im all for innovation its got to be simple

maybe if someone came up with a reverse wing or reverse wing dagger boards or something that could hold the boat down in the water like the weight of a keel
thing would only work when the boat was moving fast but in light airs it would be the bomb cause it not got the weight of a lead keel and could have a lower forward profile

but the complexities of a moving bulb on a wing scare me off pretty quick
I know Im going to ground from time to time
its inevitable
and when I do I want to flip on that auxiliary and blast my way out of trouble still sipping on my martini and explaining to the girl that no, I didnt just hit anything

best of luck
and hey
glass is fairly easy on the environment its the epoxy that needs changing

cheers and good luck with the new design Doug
B

 

Yes, you are right this is still an intellectual exercise, although at advanced stage. I got your points. All the doubts could be real issues.
But aren't they solvable? I think they are.
Is the effort in that direction worthy ? I think it depends on the final price and the reliability the system will have.
I don't have a huge experience but 10 years in designing thought me that recently marine field is getting much better in term of the quality of the engineering approach.
There's no way to escape to the gradual trend that will make any new boat a bit more technological and complicated. Hopefully they will make us happier too... I'm optimistic about that

 

You are right :
the optimum setup found with the VPP study was a tiny angle wing nose down

 

You were closer.
Angle 1) is : 115º

 

KISS theory of survival

actually the hole green movement is towards simpler more reliable longer life and environmentally more friendly products

sail power is definitely that, but the bend towards ultra tech peripherals is not
not to say the basics of the technical era arent here to stay
a few electronics and auto-navigation systems are a godsend
but the less to go wrong the better

 

Right on. I think there seems to be some kind of innate drive in people to complicate things.

I am guilty however of not reading the first post more carefully but letting my attention be dominated by the picture and the keel. The bamboo fibers instead of glass fibers is the bomb.

As far as the price difference goes that will decrease very rapidly not only as first the pioneers then more and more builders use it , but also because as we run out of petroleum the price of petroleum and all things made out of petrochemicals will rise very dramatically.

Fossil fuels are like an inheritance that humanity received from hundreds of millions of years of biological activity from our precessing and thus ancestral life forms. And in typical youthful folly style we wasted the inheritance as fast as we could instead of making a long term plan. Now we are just beginning the change of the inheritance runs out time to get a real job- sustainability- working for the now and the future instead of living large off the savings of life past.

 

Bamboo fibers/epoxy composite has some interesting properties:

1) tensile strength is about 100 Mpa
2) compressive strength about 50 Mpa
3) composite density is about 0.84 Kg/dm^3
4) the weight in resin required is about 30% (much less than standard glass wet or infused lamination)
5) bamboo fibers are available in plies 2 meters long, 0.4mm wide(MIN) thickness, 400mm wide. They are unidirectional,
6) Bamboo can grow almost everywhere. (...very close to the yard!!)
7) These UD plies are done with a mechanical process, that require much much less energy than Glass fibres production.
8) In 3 years Bamboo plants are ready to be used for structural purpose.
9) Bamboo absorbs about 10 times more CO2 if compared to a typical wood tree.
10) considering the life cycle analysis of the bamboo/epoxy composite is computed that for each kg of the composite about 0.5 kg is a credit of CO2


A pragmatic example to clarify the weight impacts on a boat keeping the same scanting rule requirements:

the Green Cruiser 50 was designed in 3 different materials according ISO standards 12215.
Considering for example the HULL SHELL made in E-Glass/epoxy as a reference we have found that:
- Bamboo fibers/epoxy is about 6% heavier
- Carbon fibers/epoxy is about 10% lighter.