There is an uneasy silence when the required applause ends.
Artist, sustainability campaigner and naval architect David Trubridge is preaching a prickly message to super yacht designers, builders, brokers and owners, but it is the audience left twitching in their seats.
Sustainable design for super yachts, one of the most expensive, materialistic and non-essential luxury purchases available to mankind, is always going to be a tricky sell.
The gleaming flagships of the super yacht industry are typically worth about $30 million, take thousands of man hours and tonnes of steels, carbon, wood and plastics to manufacture and are regularly found bobbing in ports, unused for 90 per cent of the year.
Trubridge’s message is simple — if anyone can make a difference to the evolution of sustainable design and materials, the mega wealthy do.
“I could justify what you are making if the technology developed flows down. That is where the money is and money generates research,” he said.
Yacht Report editor-in-chief Martin Redmayne braves a reply on behalf of his peers. “But it is not realistic in terms of the capitalist world we live in.”
But there is no denying it, and one of their own continues the theme. “The greenest thing about building a super yacht is not building it,” international powerboat designer Michael Peters tells the industry elite.
Talking to the key players in the luxury end of New Zealand’s $1.8 billion boatbuilding industry at Auckland’s recent Yacht Vision symposium, he added, “but none of us believe that is going to happen”, to audible relief and a couple of nervous laughs.
Peters, well known for designing speedy and fuel-greedy poweryachts, is an unlikely champion for sustainable technology.
But a request from a client to make a “green” luxury yacht got him thinking. He admits the reality is there is no green kudos in the luxury boat industry.
“What we are doing doesn’t make a lot of sense,`” said Peters. “Do we really need a world full of 100m yachts? Only to keep our jobs really.”
He uses examples such as the 86m Italian-built superyacht Nabila, owned successively by Saudi arms dealing billionaire Adnan Khashoggi, the Sultan of Brunei, Donald Trump and a Saudi prince, which boasted bar stools covered in leather from a whale’s foreskin. Rising Sun, America’s fourth richest man Larry Ellison’s $US200m ($NZ248m) yacht, has 3.3sq km of teak decking, he adds.
“This industry has a history of seeking out the most exotic materials they can find. Often that means using the last remaining source of something.”
Teak decks are an example. Burmese teak prices have risen 500% due to a world shortage of the rainforest timber. “Yachts have a big target on them. To people outside the industry they represent a gross overuse of materials,” Peters says.
Sustainability was a key theme at the Yacht Vision 08 symposium last week. The super yacht is now a cornerstone of New Zealand’s boatbuilding industry. Each year, about seven multimillion-dollar yachts are built for a growing world demand.
The industry has boomed, with Kiwi boat builders carving out a formidable reputation around the world for quality, reliability and design excellence.
But while Peters rightly points out the sustainability message is “hard to avoid these days”, New Zealand super yacht builders seem to be managing to avoid it well. New Plymouth’s Fitzroy Yachts does not use sustainable technology in building its yachts, unless it is about producing efficiencies in the production line. “We are not making green decisions. That’s the challenge for the next 10 years,” international service support manager Gordon French says.
Alloy Yachts owner Tony Hambrook says super yacht owners will look for green technology where they see it benefiting them, but mostly they do not.
“There are very few people on the planet who aren’t conscious these days of the diminishing resource. If the owners believe they can do something better that reduces their environmental impact, then they will do it. But that doesn’t include not having a yacht.”
Green alternatives are starting to factor though; one example being a recent Alloy yacht fit-out using bamboo interior flooring instead of teak. “It is easily renewable, whereas teak is not.”
But when it came to exterior decks, there are few alternatives.
The oily wood looks good, lasts in the marine environment, and is the optimal wood for boat decking.
“There are no substitutes that I know of. There are some companies that are making synthetic teak that is supposed to look like teak but if you look closely it clearly isn’t. Those with the money do not want that,” Hambrook says.
The choice to go for a sailing yacht, the ultimate in renewable propulsion, versus a poweryacht is not driven by environmental concerns yet, Hambrook says. “People (who) like sailing make sailboats, and people who don’t opt for power boats.”
Some yacht owners, such as Sun Microsystems founder Bill Joy, are spending ridiculous amounts of money to “green up” their yachts.
Joy’s yacht, Ethereal, is due for launch this year with a price tag of C56m ($NZ107m) due to his efforts to rethink every technology aboard.
But even a client “making the effort” is not going to win this game, Ethereal designer legendary Kiwi boat architect Ron Holland says.
“We thought we were going to create a green yacht. In reality it is not very green, but you could say this is one man’s effort to do what he can,” Holland says.
Mark Orams, a marine environmentalist and scientist and former sailing companion of Sir Peter Blake, says it is ridiculous it is not a New Zealander spearheading the green boat-building cause.
“What can we do better than anyone else? It has to be the environment. It’s great Michael Peters is saying it, but it should be a Kiwi. This is a chance to put a stamp on it and say this is what New Zealand is all about. This is about vision,” Orams says.
The impetus is going to come from the industry’s customers and if they did not get on board, they would be left behind. “These kinds of boats are not going to stop. But the people buying them are paranoid about having mud slung at them for being rich bastards stuffing up the planet.”
Peters says if anything is going to bring the construction of the ultimate gin palace into line with the future of the planet’s resources, it is exposure.
“One of the biggest motivations for building a green yacht will be the social pressure they will come under if they don’t. If you are going to change it has to be from the top down.”
However, relying on the conscience of the rich and famous is a long shot, he admits.
“We joke about the guys that fly around in their jet and then change their house to energy efficient lightbulbs. It’s ludicrous. I’m not sure that a real wealthy client gives a damn.”
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