What will yachts and yachting look like in 2015?

We are talking about the future of yachting. Fort Lauderdale is only one point on the moving map of yachting. This is a worldwide industry with most of the major players in places other than here.

I see you haven't dealt with many owners

The small boats (<30m) owned and operated by retired couples may be a good target for some greening but that same demographic is limited in the money they have to invest in green for green sake and may be unwilling to invest a million in efficienty enhancements to save a hundred thousand during their period of ownership.

The owners of large yachts demand luxury, they get luxury, and they charter their boats to people just like themselves. They demand and pay for the most luxurious experience afloat. The cost of fuel is only small part of the operating costs. A typical 50 meter boat might burn $250 to $300 thousand a year in diesel, plus about the same amount just to haul it back and forth between the Med and the Caribbean. No big deal though, that is about a week's charter fee for many of the boats most (many) of us are talking about. The next generation of owers and charterers won't be any different. If nothing else they will demand more and more of newer and more extravagant.

That is not to say the next generation of boats won't incorporate some very innovative and exciting developments but most of them will be driven by regulatory actions, not benevolent environmentalism. There are real benefits to cleaning up exhaust emissions, reducing or eliminating wastewater discharges, and experimenting with new technologies for publicity or charter marketing purposes but don't kid yourself about a green revolution in the large yacht business.

Put down your Kool-Aid glass for a moment and look around. The US is the world's second largest economy very close behind the EU, China is about 20 percent of the US. Most of the yacht builders are spread around Europe but the US is still a major player and will remain so if not actually grow. Don't judge the market or ownership by the flag on the stern, Grasshopper.

Power= Area(A)x solar constant(C) x efficiency(e)
where 'e' refers to how much of that light energy gets converted.

There is a high-power, high-current panel on the market now that has a factor more power and carries 5-10 times more current than typical thin-film panels.

yes I too have noticed they are much smaller.

My points still stand.

Efficiency is coming, no matter what.
The US has been hemoraging out its current accounts ballance for years.
with batteries getting better and cheeper people will store their energy in them for when it is needed.
Solar cells and solar pains are goint to play a larger and larger role.

Yachts may change, but most of the yachting will still be performed with the yachts we have today. It is not as with cars, cell phones or computers where the old one is scrapped, at least in my part of the world 90+ percent of all yachts built over the last 50 years are still floating.

New kind of batteries and more efficient consumers such as led lights will extend the life of our present boats even longer, but I doubt we will have battery power for propulsion other than on sailing yachts and small slow going boats for as long as we can see.

Hi,

Not a bad way of looking at it Lars.

I was just having a discussion with a couple of colleagues last night and we were discussing an old boat that was never a top drawer yacht in the first place that has undergone a massive refit complete with re engineing and is till not much of a vessel at all.

I asked them (both of whom have a lot of experience in commercial vessels and yachts) why do people do this to yachts whereas a old commercial vessel would be up the beach in a flash an old knackered yacht goes for a refit.

The common thought was sentimentality for particular yachts that might have had previous famous owners/guests etc.

I don't think we are going to see any magic bullet that transforms drive systems to such a degree as is being pushed by some posters here.

Traditional Engine/Gearbox/Shaft and Propeller is the cheapest way to get your boat to move through the water and will likely remain this way for sometime to come.

One thing missing from this thread is perspective. Opcn is from the world of smaller personal yachts and eco-touring (Kodiak, Ak). Operating a small yacht in an eco-friendly way using experimental or new technologies may not be cost effective but is worth trying and is tried (I think most of us have seen 40' cats covered in solar collectors with wind gens spinning). Doing it for a 50m yacht chartering to the rich and famous, well...they don't usually want to be inconvenienced further than occassionallly driving a Prius and buying carbon credits. Some of those technologies will certainly make it into upcoming generations of big yachts. Suspect I won't see diesel become obsolete in my lifetime though.

Do you have a new book on solar power you need to share or do you just not understand that you cannot get more power out of an array than goes into it?

Yes but what I am referring to is a solar cell's energy conversion efficiency- the percentage of power converted (from absorbed light to electrical energy) and collected, when a solar cell is connected to an electrical circuit.
Current research on third generation solar cell technologies are targeting conversion efficiencies of 30-60% while retaining low cost materials and manufacturing techniques.

Still the answer to that has to be "so what?" The figures I posted on the size of an array required to power a 2500kW yacht were based on at first, 40 percent conversion efficiency, and lastly at a whopping and for now unobtainable 90 percent and the area is still over half that of an American football field. Even if the things were free and extracted 100 percent of the sun's energy that fell on them, it would take 2500 square meters of surface on the sunniest day. That no longer describes a yacht, it would be a barge.

The point stands, solar power and batteries are not going to change the face of yachting by 2015.

But, if we could convert fantasy and fervor into energy we could run several large yachts off the LiPo and solar crowd. If we recruited the aircar guys we could power the entire Med season.

Hmmm, this is where things went totally off course- post #63 para 5.. 'if you are claiming...' If you can show me where I started claiming that yachts will run on solar power in 2015 i'll be happy to keep responding.

Marmot, Shhh!. You don't want to scare them away! If they figure out that the nice little round portholes just above the waterline on some newbuilds are actually just holes with hidden oarlocks and retractable mounted 3 man oars waiting to be manned by the above mentioned fervent "volunteers" they might run away and we'll have to resort to diesel to move about.

The whole quote should have been "if you are claiming or believe... " If you don't then there isn't a problem.

I absolutely agree with Lars.

As for NYCAP123's comment; I do not think that anything I said should make anyone think that diesel is on its way out. Until someone comes up with a small efficient nuclear power device that would be appropriate for a 50 M yacht some oil derivative or replacement is going to be key. I'm just talking about the periphery, the little things that will change.

In 6 years you will not be able to buy new flatscreen TV's that use as much electricity as todays do. Incandescent bulbs are going to be completely out of the picture and solid LED systems will be cheaper and easier and look better. They will produce less heat and as a result will mean less AC will be needed.

Looking at things from purely a luxury stand point, do your 50M yachts run completely silently? I've never been on a MY that was completely silent, with a generator running you may have as much as 45 db in some parts of the yacht, Batteries are dead silent. If just for the sake of a happier crew some people will be installing the new battery systems, which, after they get even smaller will get a whole lot cheaper too (the mining is the most expensive part of battery manufacture, 10% of the lithium probably means 80% less cost a $50K system would be cost effective, and could mean that you run your gens for 15 minutes 3 times a night instead of all night long).

There are some other cool Nanotech things, Nantennas are one, you can make an antenna that grabs IR, and emboss it into a thin plastic film, if they figure out how to change the frequency they can power a room off the heat bouncing around in it, i.e. you get an air conditioner that doesn't dry the air and pumps out electricity rather than using it, freezers and refrigerators too (although a freezer would probably still need some help).

Composites would be a lot stronger if they had fibers going perpendicular to the weave, but the fibers we had were too big and squeezed out the resin, well with a modest 1% increase in weight and 10% cost increase you can mix carbon nanotubes into the resin, since the diameter is 1/1000th of the carbon fibers they can happily rest in the gaps in the weave and hold the different plies together very tightly, increasing strength 10 fold. Even if this were just a wear strip along a keel it would be a heck of a lot safer.

They can etch nanowires alon a semiconductor block, and make little pockets, in 10 years we will probably have supercomputers that use 20 kW and exabyte hardrives that are the size of modern hard drives. OLED screens are just amazing, they are thin and crystal clear, and very power efficient (unlike LCD screens that blast light through the screen that blocks it out).

This thread would be so much more fun if it were 26 years out instead of 6 years out.

This was sent by YF member Brian Eiland...

Interesting, but um "sailboat"?

I don't see any sails either and I certainly don't see the future of yachting looking anything like that hocky puck on skids.

Yachting encompasses not only the "large yacht business", but the medium and small self-crewed and chartered yachts as well as dinner, tour and other commercial yachts. Who but Gene Roddenberry imagined half of what we call everyday essentials today. Just a few years ago I wouldn't have envisioned "A" or Oracle or the Maltese Falcon. I still remember Eddie Murphy's reaction in Beverly hills cop to the way those guys in LA were dressed. Now that's everywhere. I do agree that I'd not expect to see many (any) large yachts looking like that by 2015, but the future is a very interesting place.

Maybe like this ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23phT7quZ6w

docking that on a wet day looks like it would be an adventure for any crew who have to walk the side decks.