If you ever get a look at LLoyd Kahn's book "Tiny Homes on the Move" there's a few junk rigs in there, and also a small jute/polyester resin composite boat called Tara Tiri. A young woman bought it off the builder and has been ocean voyaging with it. 

Tara Tiri

Wicked video Richard! Very glad I only have to watch it and not having to take something like that across an ocean.

Great innovation too!

old hulls

yes, a bit of a problem but not as much as you would think

to chop them up (chain saw) throw the lumps in with stone in a crusher and then use for road repairs. pots holes would not be so bad and the road repair might last longer than a few days.

down side would people start taking perfectly good boats to the crusher to receive so much a tonne would they be that dishonest. who knows. but at the end of the day, this is not an impossible task just one that needs thought and money.

But when we talk about bio based compossits it does not mean that they will break down like the super market bag, it means that the raw base oils are sort from grown or natural sources and not from fossil oil and being through a refinery six or seven times.

Most additives that we try to use more of are the natural products such as wood flour and celi fibres, however, we at the moment seem to be stuck with glass which is a good product except it uses a lot of energy to produce and deliver, most currently coming from china and Germany.

I don't see in our life times a boat that will be easy to recycle as insurance and owners want them to go through a 100-year storm with no damage. I can see a tax on boats so that the cost of disposing of them can be met, which will push prices of new hulls up which might mean people do more refitting. That, for now, would be the best option

David Tyler wrote:If a bio-based composite boat could be made to bio-degrade, then we'd be getting somewhere. So long as it didn't degrade while I was sailing it offshore, that is.

Yes, I've always thought that this could be a problem with bio-degradable artefacts.  You really need to spray them with something, or flick a switch or say the magic word, when you decide it's time they started degrading.  For the poor and frugal, it could end up that you'd be living surrounded by stuff slowly mouldering away. 

Just like the old days, come to think of it!

Scott Dufour wrote:

Here's a paper on the direct comparison - and surprisingly it boils down to this sentence at the moment:

"Continuous glass fibre reinforcement appears to be superior from an environmental energy viewpoint to spun flax yarn."

Continuous glass fibre reinforcement appears to be superior from an

environmental energy viewpoint to spun flax yarn

Not only that, we're extremely unlikely to run out of silicon oxide.

Wikipedia has a useful article on biocomposites, and Entropy Resins is one company I found offering bio-sourced resin.

I certainly like the sound of a wood composite where the resin is called "super sap"!