Recycled
Aluminum for Masts
& Recycled Pet Bottles for Sails
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Yachts
tend to lighten weight in order to acquire speed
and efficiency in steering. FPR, which enables mass
production, is mostly employed. In general in wooden
yachts, lauan plywood that is comparatively light
is employed, but white oak plywood employed for
"MERMAID III" has specific gravity of approximately
0.8.
Taking in mind that the specific gravity of common
wooden yachts is 0.5~0.6, "MERMAID III" may seem
to go against the times. But the voyage is not a
competing race, and it emphasize the necessity to
hold back desire and accept somewhat inconvenience
and loss in the process of handing down natural
resource to the next generation.
Since the project is the restoration of the first
MERMAID, the boat maintains its original design
as much as possible, but the improvements in whole
balance were made in order to attain better steering
and performance, such as the position of the mast
and elongation of the length at waterline. The floaters
were installed at the bow and the stern achieving
unsinkable structure. Electricity will be supplied
by fuel cell enabling to send e-mails and photographs
aboard.
Recycled materials are used for the masts and the
sails for MALTfS MERMAIDIII, as they were
for MERMAID I. The masts are made out of alloy 3004
extracted out of used aluminum cans including MALT'S
BEER cans, and the sails are made of the fabric
made out of pet bottles (ECOPET). ECOPET, which
is generally used as a fabric for shirts and windbreakers,
tends to stretch slightly more compared with the
normal fabrics, but in voyage in 1999, it proved
to be as good as the normal fabrics in endurance
and strength.
The fabric for the sail changed from cotton to nylon,
than to polyesters (and aramid for racing boats
which require the speediness), but the demand for
such a material as ECOPET will increase in need
for the efficient applications on natural resources.
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