Pipe Dreams

Before we bid goodbye to HDPE and PET products applied to boating, let's look at at a bit of live-action innovation from Indonesia, whose 1500 islands demand at least a passing acquaintance with the arts of the sea. The commentary fears for the fate of rainforest given its ubiquitous use of timber ~ tho' often with a veneer of fibreglass ~ but I told them not to worry in view of the fact it'll soon be gone anyway, orang-utans or not.

What is interesting from the first grab is how the outriggers are now furnished with the sort of foam kids use to stay afloat in swimming pools. But to cut to the chase the firm involved is best known for equipping fish-farms, where they use the sort of HDPE piping that otherwise carries water or liquified gas to form the pontoons that surround each pen.

Moving on we can see how via an intellectual leap they experimented with pinching the ends of a heated tube to form the pontoons of a catamaran, before testing it in model form and doing the same thing on a larger scale altogether with their own custom-made jigs and moulds. This resulted in a line of successful rescue boats like the one appearing in 'Thames Water' yellow.

A little-known fact is that the man who is second in UK rich-lists (where I was catapulted from to 70,004,765 after a post headed 'blow-job') is industrialist James Dyson... whose first project was a landing-craft made of polypropylene pipes!

N.B. I added a comment to the video by way of hands-across-the-ocean intended to establish a worldwide fellowship of those dedicated to deployment of plastic piping at sea: motto 'Aquam potius foris ponamus' viz. 'We put our water on the outside'.

Blow Job

We can't depart these shores without examining the other way polyethylene boats are made, which is by inflating what is much like a warmed-over condom within a two-part mould not unlike that in the previous post but turned through the vertical.

Ed. We wish to apologise to anyone affected by the use of today's title, especially those tuning in from care homes or nurseries. Nonetheless we defend our use of tags such as these along with thumbnails of naked women in order to send our stats through the roof. We do respond to feedback however, which should be directed by pigeon-post to Mr Sergey Brin, c/o Google (who kindly supply our digital soap-box).

FoMo? RoMo!

Let's have a look at a way of building boats that is sweeping all before it, at least at this scale. Pioner contracted out production to this specialist means of manufacture in order to become Norway's best-selling brand, for instance. In many ways it's not unlike cooking, as we'll see by examining the method step by step.

Firstly add plastic pellets... of the sort that we use to fill the oceans so that they end up inside our brains every time we eat fish. With these popped into the mould, affix another mould in the shape of a lid. Now warm it up, and roll it over and over such that it stick to the sides.

Remove the casting, or 'boat' as we experts call it, and trim the edges before adding material to which the floor can be fixed along with parts like the transom that are to be glued and screwed into place.

It's called Rotary Moulding and like much else in the modern world was invented here in Britain as far back as 1855 when it was used to cast artillery shells with a nice even thickness... before the same method was used to make chocolate Easter eggs.

So once where we pioneered the manufacture of shipping vessels, we now specialise in Cadbury's cream eggs instead. Which is us in a nutshell really: lazy bastards who can't even produce confectionery without support from the USA.

Ed. He's being a bit harsh ~ watch the vid and you'll see the machinery involved is actually made by Alan Yorke Engineering in Northamptonshire. Well done Alan!

But It's Been So Empty Without Me.

You can knock the Europeans, but there are glimmers of hope everywhere and even in places like Bradford where they've produced the world's first plastic narrowboat.

Fitting that it should happen in the North of England, where canal boats kicked off an industrial revolution whose aftermath we are still living with... or suffering from.

Meanwhile over the water in Holland they're producing the same sort of thing albeit with a twist of speed. The clue is in the recycling symbol on the bow, which belies the use of HDPE (high-density polyethylene): a material that addresses everything a mariner could hope for.

With the obvious exception of levity, which is where the 'miracle material' that we recently discovered comes in for building boats that may yet fly.

For the takeaway from all this is that plastic sheet is as suited to mass production of fast vessels to the extent steel sheet is for the very largest. 

Though we were beginning to see that, weren't we?

YouTopia

He should come to the UK... we're there already.

Tunnel Vision

Said it before, but electrification allows old ideas to be revisited in ways that were simply not feasible prior... as this maritime cargo drone that Hopflyt has developed amply demonstrates.

Tunnel or channel wings are not new, but were previously married to conventional reciprocating aero-engines and the problem was ~ and remains ~ the fact there is no easy way to fix a conventional engine to what is effectively a missing wing-spar.

The trick with the model above is that the inverted-arch section of the wing vectors along with the motor (around the spar) for hovering flight; meaning that allied with an onboard turbine generator, the aircraft is ideal to meet logistical tasks at sea.

Expect to see more of such generators whilst awaiting ongoing improvements to the energy density of batteries, incidentally. They can already be purchased online from Chinese retail platforms, and will undoubtedly evolve themselves as a short-term fix that may (like much else) prove to be a long-term remedy to range and endurance issues bedevilling electrical drones used offshore.

Electrifying

There are bright-ish spots in the continuing decline of the UK, and I say bright-ish because no sooner than this tech was perfected at a university college in Oxford, it would be bought up by Mercedes: revenue of business here being diverted to states abroad at the soonest opportunity.

But as the UK powers down, electrical motors are clearly powering up and this axial flow type producing an insane 1000hp whilst weighing just twelve kilos or 25lb.

The inventor Ray Kurzweil said that we should design for the future, for what might be rather than just what happens to be.

In view of advances in motors, batteries and solar power you might want sea-going drones to run on petrol for the current range and endurance that it would provide; but going forward you'd be equally insane not to transition to electrical power at the soonest.

Whether it applies to EVs however is something else altogether: growing numbers are reverting to gasoline upon the sooner-than-expected expiry of their EVs, when they realise they're buying into a subscription model instead of just a car.