NOT YOUR GRANDFATHER’S BOAT
Plank-on-frame, strip planked, glass-reinforced plastic, e-glass, carbon fibre, and vacuum infusion. The process of building a boat has changed dramatically in the last 80 years. And, it would seem, the real revolution is just beginning.
Archaeologists tell us plank-built boats are 3,500 years old, with the first plankon-frame construction appearing in approximately 500 AD. Apart from variations on a theme, e.g., clinker, then carvel, boat construction remained essentially unchanged until the development of iron and steel.
The first iron-hulled boat, a 21m river barge named the Trial, was launched in 1787 in Shropshire, England. Although the construction material had changed, the basic process had not: build a frame, cover it in something to keep the water out, and go for a sail. This is essentially how boats were built until the end of World War 2.
Fibreglass: From Top Secret to Top Choice
GRP (Glass-Reinforced Plastic) was developed in the UK to replace the moulded plywood radomes used on WW2 aircraft. GRP is transparent to microwaves . Of course, composite material is nothing without the resin. The development of the first “good” polyester resin is quite intriguing.
The story goes that Carlton Ellis, while working at DuPont, made the first batch of a thermosetting resin in 1936. Towards the end of the WW2, the Nazis improved on Ellis’ formula to the extent that the German navy used it to build more than 45 patrol boats. British intelligence agents obtained the improved formula, passing it back to the U.S.A..…. but I digress. The first recreational fibreglass boat was purportedly the groundbreaking deep-V, 7m ‘Hunter’, built by a Mr Bill Dyer, to a design by Ray Hunt. She was one of four built in 1957–58.
One significant advantage of the development of composite boat building is that it has dramatically reduced the cost, resulting in a corresponding explosion of boat ownership post-WW2.
Kiwi’s Can’t Fly, But We Do Like to Float
Although Kiwis can’t fly, we sure like mucking about in boats. Research undertaken in 2020 by Maritime NZ estimates that 48% of adult Kiwis are involved in recreational boating.
Much of this popularity is due to two New Zealand boat-building icons: Sandy and his son, Lionel Sands. Lionel only recently retired as the Director of Haines Hunter New Zealand after 60-plus years of boat building. He personally helped develop and launch two of the most popular power boat models built in New Zealand: the Sea Craft Valencia and the Haines Hunter SF700.
Apprenticing at Sea Craft, founded in 1946 by Lionel’s father, Sandy, Lionel learnt his trade under Sandy’s watchful eye. Lionel’s first boat was a hand-riveted, 12-foot clinker.
By the 1960s, Sea Craft’s wooden boat reputation was well established. However, Sandy’s visit to the Los Angeles Boat Show in 1965 validated the potential of a revolutionary medium called fibreglass.
Sending two staff to California to learn how to build hand-laid glass boats, Sandy and Lionel, now part of the management team, are fully committed to this new technology, building a state-of-the-art, temperature and humidity-controlled laminating factory. By the end of the 1960s, Sea Craft had transitioned entirely and was now only building in fibreglass.
Fortune favours the brave. In 1980, following the disastrous impact of a 20% boat sales tax, Sea Craft purchased the rights to build the very popular Haines Hunter, taking full ownership of Haines Hunter New Zealand in 1985.
Haines Hunter still hand-lays its hulls and has been quick to adopt new developments in composite technology, with carbon fibre reinforcements, vacuum infusion, and foam-cored decks becoming standard in numerous models. So, Lionel did not merely witness the transition from wooden boat building to composite in New Zealand; he was instrumental in making it happen.
What the Experts Say
Lloyd Stevenson and Jeremy Anderson (GM) of Lloyd Stevenson Boatbuilders have also pretty much seen it all when it comes to building boats.
Lloyd apprenticed at the Percy Vos yard in Wynyard Quarter, where traditional wood boat-building techniques were commonplace. By the time Lloyd founded Lloyd Stevenson Boatbuilders in the mid-1980s, the use of fibreglass had well and truly taken over.
“The first boat I built was strip-planked cedar core with e-glass laminates built over the laminated Kauri frames and keel floors with a ply deck and cabin. Looking back on it now, it was very DIY.”
“Now, with decades of experience, we have much greater control. With the introduction of infusion and vacuum bagging, we can achieve an exceptional finish quality and ensure our weight targets are met.”
Lloyd and Jeremy agree that, the greatest technological advancement in modern times is the invention of epoxy resin and composite fibres.
Nic de Mey, owner of Nic de Mey Yachts, has only ever known composite boat building. Starting his apprenticeship at Marten Marine, Nic worked on Nolex trailer sailers, then KZ1, Michael Fay’s America’s Cup big boat challenge.
Nic cites two significant changes to boatbuilding: first, the introduction of composites and learning ‘what we can do with them’, such as complex shapes and weight savings. Weight savings have become even greater since the introduction of vacuum bagging, infusion, and pre-preg fabrics.
Secondly, computer power. Designing and building boats using CAD and CNC machining has brought forth a step-change in the quality of fit and finish; once the preserve of only the very best boat builders, it is now the standard.
Shane Cameron from Calibre Composites agrees with Nic about the use of computer power. He supplies polyurethane fibreglass reinforced board, PVC foam board, and HDPE sheets to the marine, automotive, and aeronautical industries in New Zealand.
Shane explains that practically anywhere you would traditionally use plywood, you can replace it with one of Calibre’s products. He has seen a marked increase in CNC machining, where designs are being cut out as kit sets that the boat builder has only to assemble.
The Rise of the Machine
Dennis Harjamaa, owner of Artnautica Yacht Design, concurs that adopting CAD and CNC machining allows designers to be much more accurate.
With three decades of experience, Dennis designs aluminium and composite boats. He says designs are now far more detailed, with every structure and component thought out and dimensioned. The days of boat builders lofting the boat at full scale are now almost a thing of the past.
Additionally, Dennis observes, designers now have a great deal more responsibility for the quality of the finished boat. With greater collaboration between designer and builder, designers are much more involved in the building process. If something does not fit or a bulkhead is fractionally out of place, it is now the designer’s problem.
Dean Pannett of NZ Composites, like Nic de Mey, has spent his entire professional career in the composite world. Establishing NZ Composites in 2010, Dean has seen the growth and development of composite technology first-hand. His extensive and varied career has taken him around the world; the highlights of which include helping build Steinlager II, working on the first three International Americas Cup Class (IACC) boats, being a technical sales rep for a composites supplier and a hull loss adjuster with Auckland based Lloyds Agency.
An interesting observation Dean makes is that boat builders have had to become much more knowledgeable regarding the chemistry and physics of building with composites. For boats to be strong, light and durable, builders now require a much deeper understanding of how the various materials, components and structures work together to create a cohesive whole.
Dean highlighted another change he sees: the increasing use of spread tow technology, particularly carbon fibre. Spread tow technology is the ability to build carbon fibre reinforcement that is much lighter and with thinner ply thickness than was previously possible, offering two key advantages. First, multiple plies for the same weight can be laid up in multiple orientations, significantly increasing strength for the same reinforcement weight. Second, spread tow reinforcements promotes superior surface quality.
Dean’s technical knowledge is impressive; after discussing spread tow technology, Dean talked about lower areal weight pre-preg unidirectional plies, new low temperature and extended life epoxy chemistries and NCF (Non-Crimp fabric technology); very quickly, it became apparent I was well out of my depth. So, if you need any advice about composite technology, give Dean a call.
Grant Beck, of Adhesive Tech, has been in the composite world from the very beginning (he and Richard Downs-Honey, co-owner of High Modulus, now Gurit, were flatmates). New Zealand boat building in the mid to late 1980s, Grant tells me, was leading a global revolution in composite boat building. Designers and boat builders quickly recognised the advantages of composites and were happy to try things out, the Kiwi mentality allowing rapid innovation. Even when the world caught up and introduced developments such as vacuum bagging, our boat builders quickly adopted and improved the technology.
Something Grant educated me on was the introduction of infusion technology. I had previously assumed vacuum bagging and infusion pretty much happened concurrently. Not the case; infusion did not come onto the scene until several years after vacuum bagging.
The final observation Grant left me with is the growth of the use of carbon fibre. In relative dollars, Grant thinks carbon is now about half the price it was 30 years ago, it is much more prevalent today and likely to grow in use in the years to come.
Tony Stanton, Engineering Manager at Gurit Asia Pacific Ltd, agrees that CAD and digital manufacturing have revolutionised the world of boat building. They have also developed a production system where all the reinforcement (e-glass, carbon fibre, etc) and core materials are pre-cut to the exact shape and size required, providing the boat builder with a triumvirate of benefits: reduced labour costs, reduced materials costs and improved quality.
Gurit also appears to be very focused on minimising the environmental impact of composites. Their laminating and infusion resins now all include a percentage of bio content as standard. Gurit claims bio content resins can reduce the equivalent of up to 4kg of CO2 per 1kg of product used, compared to non-bio equivalents.
Another technology they have developed, which is proving very beneficial to boat building, is a core kitting optimisation program that customises the core treatments based on the actual curvature of the hull mould and the stiffness of the core product being used. This creates an optimised cutting pattern that ensures a perfect fit, while minimising the resin consumed in bonding the core in place, resulting in a lighter boat, with lower materials consumption.
A.I., 3D Printing and Recycling
So, what does the future hold? As I said at the beginning, it appears the revolution has only just begun. The experts I interviewed for this article agree that digital technology will continue to significantly influence the world of boat building, impacting everything from business plans, quoting jobs, time tracking and advertising to concept visualisation, naval architecture and structural engineering.
Nic de Mey astutely noted, “The most significant shift in boatbuilding? I believe it’s A.I. Those who embrace and integrate A.I. will move far ahead of the rest. The result? Leaner operations with a massive jump in professionalism and productivity for next to no cost, gone will be the days of relying on outside experts, everything will be in-house, if outside help is needed, costs will be a lot more constrained.”
This is a sentiment that Dean Pannett agrees with. He sees the increasing impact of A.I. and humanoid robotics as an integral part of the future of boat building.
For Dennis Harjamaa, the future holds two significant developments—3D printing of boats and increasing emphasis on environmental responsibility, in both endof-life recyclability and fuel efficiency.
In fact the 3D printing future is already here. I spoke with Giovanni Minari, a materials engineer at MOI Composites in Italy, a 3D composites printing company with a proprietary technology known as ‘continuous fibre additive manufacturing’.
Although not specifically a boat builder, as a testbed to validate the technical capabilities of their system, MOI Composites built MAMBO (Motor Additive Manufacturing Boat), a 6.5m, 800kg dry weight, 26 knots, all-composite, 3D printed power boat. Launched at the 2020 Genoa Boat Show and powered with a 115hp Mercury outboard, the organic lines of the boat would take untold hours to build using conventional build techniques.
And yes, conventional, composite boat building skills were used to finish that boat, but that is not the point. Due to the freedom that 3D printing affords, it is possible to manufacture shapes and structures that are impossible to produce using traditional mould building simply because they do not have the issue of having to remove the mould without destroying the component once it is built.
Interestingly, MOI Composites is addressing the issue of finish quality, having developed a proprietary Short Fibre Manufacturing technology that offers a much better surface finish right out of the printer.
Dennis’ second point is environmental responsibility, with fuel efficiency very much a consideration of future boat buyers. From Dennis’ perspective, future legislation may require boats to be sustainable, recyclable and much more fuel efficient. He sees developments in CAD allowing designs that are more elegant and efficient. Dennis wonders whether larger planing hulls might be legislated out of existence in some parts of the world until alternative fuels or more power-dense battery technology catch up.
Tony Stanton also believes that reducing materials consumption is a key aspect of improving energy efficiency and reducing environmental impact. Engineering structures that are materials optimised and lightweight whilst maintaining their safety and reliability is very much the goal, with digital manufacturing tools and processes further reducing production waste. This philosophy being very much put into practice with the structural engineering work Guit did on the Wellington electric ferry and Team New Zealand’s hydrofoiling Chase Zero.
Improving sustainability is at the forefront at Gurit. As a partner in the REPOXYBLE consortium, a 3-year EU Horizon-funded project aiming to create fully chemically recyclable bio-based epoxy composites, Gurit is developing the bio-based resin chemistry. At end-of-life, the objective is for products built with this system to be cost-effectively broken down into their component parts, with each component being reused or repurposed.
A lofty and noble goal.
Steve Fergusson, co-owner of Innovate Composites, thinks foiling technology will have a big impact on boat efficiency and will become commonplace. This is undoubtedly an opinion shared by Lloyd and Jeremy at Lloyd Stevenson Boatbuilders, having recently launched a 13.7m foil assisted, high performance Catalyst power cat. The real world data from this boat shows its fuel efficiency is dramatically improved without compromising performance.
So, the future looks pretty exciting… and, it appears, my grandkids’ boats will also be very different from mine.
