TECHNICAL
With intensifying focus on the environmental impact of GRP boats, Theo Stocker looks at the latest wooden boats to see if there is a better way
Boatbuilding as we know it is not a sustainable process. The dawn of mass production GRP boats from the 1960s onwards fuelled an explosion in sailing participation and boat ownership. Rather than building each boat from scratch, as wooden boats have been since time immemorial, GRP boats can be laminated and popped out of a mould at speed, their fair lines cloned from one single plug tens or hundreds of times. The cost of buying boats tumbled and allowed many to get on the water for the first time, and for that, fibreglass is to be lauded – a miracle material that is immensely strong, light, robust and virtually maintenance free.
Boat building is big business, with an estimated six million leisure boats now bobbing around in Europe and 10,000 new boats reportedly being pumped out every year in the UK alone. The problem, environmentally speaking, is twofold: building GRP boats produces a lot of CO2, and the boats, once at the end of their lives, never biodegrade, and recycling GRP is extremely difficult.
New technologies are emerging all the time, from bio resins and natural fibre to composites that can be returned to their original states and remade into new objects. But old technologies also remain relevant – in particular, wood.
While traditional boatbuilding remains a live skill, it is on modern construction techniques that any future in wooden boats really lies, merging modern resins and plywoods with traditional materials to produce complex, modern, lightweight shapes, but with a much lower impact both in build and at end of life.
I spoke to three of the leading yards building modern boats in wood today to find out about the latest innovations in wooden boat building, and how they are constantly working to make boat building more sustainable, as well as more affordable and accessible. These were Spirit Yachts in Ipswich, building modern classics from 30ft daysailers up to 111ft superyachts, Swallow Yachts in Cardigan Bay, which builds small but rugged trailer sailers, cruisers and motorboats, and RM Yachts in France, which builds a sporty range of offshore and bluewater cruising yachts.
It has taken time for the sailing public to understand the difference between modern and traditional wooden boat building, however.
‘Modern wooden boatbuilding is a world apart from traditional wooden boat building,’ explained Matt Newland, owner of Swallow Yachts. ‘When we started in 1995, we had to spend a lot of time explaining to sailors that a modern ply epoxy boat is completely dry and virtually as low maintenance as a GRP boat. It used to be about 30% more expensive to build a boat in plywood than i
