What Happens To Old Grp Boats?

[Timbo]

https://www.boatbreakers.com/end-life-boats-issue-marine-industry-cant-ignore/

[JennyMorgan]

9 hours ago, Timbo said:

https://www.boatbreakers.com/end-life-boats-issue-marine-industry-cant-ignore/

A sound, thought provoking article.   

Extending the lives of both wood and grp is expensive, often much more than the resale value of the boat. We take car scrapping as the norm,  inevitably this will apply to boats, eventually.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

[JennyMorgan]

We have 'bottle banks', why not old boat banks? That would be preferable to old boats being abandoned wherever, talking of which surely the last recorded owner could and perhaps should be regarded as having fly-tipped the old boat? Old boat banks would provide places where end of life boats would go to be dismantled and old hulls cut up. Once a month or whatever the scrap would be picked up for treating as waste at a regional centre. In the long run quite probably cheaper than retrieving wrecks from reedbeds or even from the bottom of the river. For a kick-off the relevant bylaws probably need revising and strengthening. We have funeral plans for us humans, why not for our boats? Any better ideas?

[CambridgeCabby]

Boat disposal on the Broads isn’t a new thing , look at the amount of sunken Wherrys dotted around , it was fascinating to see on Rockland broad how vegetation had sprung up on these man made islands 

[Vaughan]

 

 

Some of the wherries on Surlingham Broad, at low tide.

There are seven of them sunk in that corner and I remember walking over their decks, in the late 1950s.

[LizG]

1 hour ago, Vaughan said:

 

 

Some of the wherries on Surlingham Broad, at low tide.

There are seven of them sunk in that corner and I remember walking over their decks, in the late 1950s.

I tried to find my photo but Vaughan got there first.  I assume the names of the wherries are known as they are at Rockland as well?

[MauriceMynah]

Have they been tolled?

Will the BA be removing them any time soon?

Does the BA know the names and addresses of the owners?

Are they owned by the same person who owns Pelican or the Sutton Houseboat?

Hmmm, many a true word spoken in jest!

[JennyMorgan]

In days of old and waste not, want not, it was quite usual for dead wherries and other end of life boats to be used as a basis for creating a jetty or reinforcing a river wall. Imagine, if you will, the uproar if redundant grp  boats were similarly repurposed in this day and age. Those abandoned wherries will one day return to nature, the same can't be said of the millions of synthetic boats that will eventually die .

[MaceSwinger]

I remember a few years ago I was trying to dispose of an old GRP kayak that had exceeded it's useful life. I trawled the web for a while trying to find out about GRP recycling but all I could find was ruinously expensive. The best advice I ended up with was "cut it up, chuck it in a skip". I felt guilty, knowing full well that GRP is anything but biodegradable. 

[MauriceMynah]

If it's not biodegradable, what has degraded it to this "end of life" stage?

[MaceSwinger]

1 hour ago, MauriceMynah said:

If it's not biodegradable, what has degraded it to this "end of life" stage?

Same as with anything else; damaged beyond economical repair. 

[MauriceMynah]

12 minutes ago, MaceSwinger said:

Same as with anything else; damaged beyond economical repair. 

You don't think "fashion" brings about "end of life"?

[MaceSwinger]

1 hour ago, MauriceMynah said:

You don't think "fashion" brings about "end of life"?

Certainly does, although I misunderstood slightly and though you meant my kayak specifically!

I think that in the case of Broads cruisers people will seek to sell their older models in favour of newer Alphas and Sheerlines etc, and if nobody is after an older boat that will force the end of life upon it. I find that quite sad really, that a boat that is still serviceable could end up scrapped just because it's not the nicest to look at or because it's a bit old fashioned.

[teadaemon]

4 hours ago, MauriceMynah said:

If it's not biodegradable, what has degraded it to this "end of life" stage?

A variety of things.

UV light (and normally to a much lesser extent, background radiation) degrades polyester and other plastics.

Hydrolysis of the chemical bonds does happen, very slowly in most circumstances (although I did hear of one case where acid catalysis of this reaction lead to a hole the size of a couple of dinner plates appearing in the bottom of a large motor cruiser, fortunately while it was out of the water for maintenance and inspection).

Also, even if not subjected to major impact damage, over time the flexing of a GRP hull will break the adhesion between the resin and the glass fibres, progressively weakening it.

All of these processes take a very long time in most circumstances, but it's not possible to prevent them happening, and over a long enough period of time the damage will add up to the point where it becomes significant. We're now at the stage where the oldest GRP boats are around 75, and a great many are over 50. Now a really well built GRP hull may have a lifespan of a century or more, we don't really know exactly, but I think it's safe to say that there are a lot of GRP hulls that are more than half way through their useful life.

Of course there's very few GRP hulls that don't have other materials (end grain balsa core, wooden engine bearers, plywood or even chipboard deck cores) included within them. These often degrade faster than the GRP, but replacing them can be difficult or impossible, and certainly not cost effective.

There was a story I saw back in March, than in normal circumstances would have attracted a lot more attention. A group of researchers had developed a genetically engineered bacterium that was capable of depolymerising one of the common plastics used for bottles (I can't remember if it was polyethylene or polypropylene, or even both). The plastic was ground up, added to a fermentation vessel with water and the bacterium, and the end product was the unpolymerised chemical used to create the plastic. This is important as it could be separated and used to create new plastics of equal quality to those made with new feedstocks, rather than the lower grade plastics normally created by recycling the polymer using heat and pressure. I think that long term this will probably be the way forward for most if not all plastic recycling.

[Upcycler]

2 hours ago, MaceSwinger said:

 if nobody is after an older boat that will force the end of life upon it. I find that quite sad really, that a boat that is still serviceable could end up scrapped just because it's not the nicest to look at or because it's a bit old fashioned.

I can see that happening with the bath tubs of today that they are renowned for, but at the moment I believe they are good for hiring if you are on a budget. Although the way I see it with people upcycling out of date plane fuselages to train carriages and sticking them in their garden, it won't belong before someone will transform one of those boats and have the biggest and slightly weird hot tub in Britain.

[MaceSwinger]

You could turn an old 50' bathtub into a literal bathtub

I was leaning more towards private ownership than hire yards, but I agree that the old bathtubs are certainly still popular.

I can see that happening with the bath tubs of today that they are renowned for, but at the moment I believe they are good for hiring if you are on a budget. Although the way I see it with people upcycling out of date plane fuselages to train carriages and sticking them in their garden, it won't belong before someone will transform one of those boats and have the biggest and slightly weird hot tub in Britain.

Sent from the Norfolk Broads Network mobile app

[OldBerkshireBoy]

2 hours ago, Upcycler said:

I can see that happening with the bath tubs of today that they are renowned for, but at the moment I believe they are good for hiring if you are on a budget. Although the way I see it with people upcycling out of date plane fuselages to train carriages and sticking them in their garden, it won't belong before someone will transform one of those boats and have the biggest and slightly weird hot tub in Britain.

Take a chainsaw and cut the top section away and that could apply to just about any hull, mind you you will need to keep the wooden formers for strength so pretty stupid idea all round.

[MauriceMynah]

Thank you Teadaemon (long time no see) for that post. it answers many of my questions, though sadly not saying things I wanted to hear, or worse, saying things I certainly didn't want to hear.

Putting some perspective on this, the numbers of GRP boats, even world wide, is probably not creating the magnitude of problems  that the articles quoted would have us believe, but rather just adding to the already existing problems regarding the human beings irresponsible use of plastics.

I still can't believe that a species that created space travel, deep sea exploration and Kentucky fried chicken, can't find a solution to old fairy liquid bottles, whether it be re-use, re-shape, re-cycle, re-purpose or restore. there merely has to be the will to do it.

 

[grendel]

if many of the plastics were able to be cleaned and recycled into a 3d printer filament or pellets for remoulding into new plastics, then that I believe would be a good solution