How would yachting have developed without GRP?

[Wansworth]

Would there be more craftsmen more apprentices ,fewer yachts……more metal boats ?Boat owners with more manual skills,less pollution ?

 

[Mark-1]

Manufacturing would be labour intensive and therefore impossible in Europe IMHO. I'm sure there would be greater local skills though.

 

[DanTribe]

If God had wanted us to have plastic boats He wouldn't have given us plywood.

 

[Puffin10032]

Boats would undoubtedly have been more expensive so there would have been fewer of them built. Home-building plywood dinghies from kits would probably have carried on. Marinas would be full of interesting and eclectic boats in every imaginable colour instead of walls of white plastic. And I'd still be useless at varnishing

 

[johnalison]

Assuming that wood would still have been the preferred material, rather than steel or aluminium, I think that we would have moved to semi massed-produced moulded hulls, moving on from boats like the Atalanta. The end results might still have turned out looking modern to our eyes.

 

[Egret]

There was problem mid sixties in getting suitable quality timber for clinker and carvel boats which possibly expedited the change to GRP - like the Kestrel 22 - it wasn't necessarily cost as the GRP ones were more expensive - very quick change though

 

[ylop]

Would there be more craftsmen

Possibly - but I think you'd still have seen a move to "mass" production so still in specific locations.

more apprentices ,

Do the big producers not have apprentices?

fewer yachts…

Probably - unless some other technology enabled the same cost/throughput

…more metal boats ?

Perhaps Aluminium in particular.

Boat owners with more manual skills,

I doubt it - the only people who could afford them would be people who can pay people to do work

less pollution ?

you just shift the pollution. If you think Aluminium is less polluting you need to look at a bauxite mine! Some of the woods we have traditionally used in boats are not very eco/biodiversity friendly. Perhaps an Ali boat can be recycled more easily? but it possibly still needs stripping of its furnishings etc to maximise usefulness. Old wooden boats are often left to decay on the shore - who cares what pollutants are on/in them at then end - or they are burned up and it all goes into the environment.

 

[KevinV]

If we'd gone the route of aluminium we wouldn't have the issue of abandoned boats clogging our rivers and estuaries - it's valuable enough to be worth (nicking and) stripping old boats. Maybe it could still make the step to mass production if made in pressed sections?

Wood is terrible as all the stuff required to build and maintain it is nasty, and eventually ends up in the environment either through rotting or burning.

GRP is turning out to have a longer life than the other component parts of a boat, so we have uneconomical hulls all over the place.

Duroplast (of Trabant fame) might have been interesting - using linen and a bio-resin now it still might be. A compostable hull sounds like quite a good idea.

3D printing thermoplastic is probably the way forward - easy to change design, no expensive moulds to make, can be made with recycled material, and in turn recycled again.

 

[Iliade]

I still like the idea of explosive hydroformed metal.

 

[obmij]

Less boats overall due to high cost of entry.

Smaller average boat size

Far fewer marinas

Many more homebuilds. Doesn't really make sense to homebuild when you can pick up a decent GRP vessel for less than the cost of materials.

Most common construction methods would be...I reckon ferro cement both by professional yards and homebuilders.

Interesting question!

 

[lustyd]

3D printing thermoplastic is probably the way forward - easy to change design, no expensive moulds to make, can be made with recycled material, and in turn recycled again.

I really don't agree with this. Thermoplastic would not be ideal for this application for a bunch of reasons including deformation due to heat. While it can in theory be recycled, more often than not UV damage over decades will make it unsuitable for that purpose, and in the meantime microplastic particles will be released into the environment. To prevent those issues, it would need covering and protecting with something which then makes it useless for recycling anyway as it would be tainted. Then you have the strength issue to deal with, which with basic plastic would be impossible without huge weight and size penalties.
While CAM probably is the way forward eventually, printing won't be in my opinion. Fibre will be placed, knitted, etc. by computer controlled machines to increase strength and weight, then some kind of plastic glue applied as it is now with vacuum bagging. We've already seen this change in the high end bicycle industry and that's trickling down. Race yachts probably use these techniques too.

 

[Wansworth]

Less boats overall due to high cost of entry.

Smaller average boat size

Far fewer marinas

Many more homebuilds. Doesn't really make sense to homebuild when you can pick up a decent GRP vessel for less than the cost of materials.

Most common construction methods would be...I reckon ferro cement both by professional yards and homebuilders.

Interesting question!

Yes ferró cement would have received more attention maybe both professional and amateur

 

[lustyd]

Personally I think metal would have won. Wood wasn't even liked when wood was common, it was accepted because it was the only sensible option for most smaller boats. Let's not forget that the only reason we have bilge pumps in our dry plastic boats today is because wood was leaky as hell. Whatever would have happened, I think we can all agree that wood would not have continued regardless.

I don't think ferro-cement would have caught on, it's a cheap way to make a boat but the result wasn't really a great boat and most have rotted from the inside.

Aluminium is cheap enough and skills are widespread. Manufacturing techniques have continually evolved over the years and I think we would have seen many more designs using it had plastic not worked out so well. Watching the speed at which Delos 2.0 has been built, and how relatively easy it's been, I think aluminium would have gone mainstream quite easily.

 

[Baggywrinkle]

We'd all be in origami steel boats designed by Brent Swain who used to post here ....

 

[boomerangben]

Strip plank construction makes lovely boats. Yes labour intensive and more expensive than GRP but strong, warm, quiet and relatively easy to maintain and only as much varnishing as you want (or none at all!)

 

[Wansworth]

Strip plank construction makes lovely boats. Yes labour intensive and more expensive than GRP but strong, warm, quiet and relatively easy to maintain and only as much varnishing as you want (or none at all!)

You can get the strips machined to get round the fitting of the strips on the curved parts,very strong form of construction

 

[Neeves]

Without glass - they would be all carbon now. or carbon/kevlar.

Jonathan

 

[Grajan]

If God had wanted us to have plastic boats He wouldn't have given us plywood.

Ahh but he only gave us the good stuff for a little while!!! "Thames"

 

[lustyd]

Without glass - they would be all carbon now. or carbon/kevlar.

Jonathan

I thought that, but then assumed he meant no composite plastics at all (which would also preclude a lot of the more modern wood). Realistically, I think he just wanted an excuse to talk about wooden boats because he's forgotten what a nightmare they are

 

[Grajan]

Personally I think metal would have won. Wood wasn't even liked when wood was common, it was accepted because it was the only sensible option for most smaller boats. Let's not forget that the only reason we have bilge pumps in our dry plastic boats today is because wood was leaky as hell. Whatever would have happened, I think we can all agree that wood would not have continued regardless.

I don't think ferro-cement would have caught on, it's a cheap way to make a boat but the result wasn't really a great boat and most have rotted from the inside.

Aluminium is cheap enough and skills are widespread. Manufacturing techniques have continually evolved over the years and I think we would have seen many more designs using it had plastic not worked out so well. Watching the speed at which Delos 2.0 has been built, and how relatively easy it's been, I think aluminium would have gone mainstream quite easily.

Back in the day we experimented with a hardboard type of material, eight foot pram dinghy which appeared to last for four or five years, but the Pioneer polystyrene dinghies beat us to the market place.