Here's an open letter I posted just today from a small topic from yesterday regarding the responsible use of boatbuilding resources and specifically, David Hazen's recent announcement that he no longer supports epoxy/glass/wooden boats as environmentally sound.

One of the stronger, driving forces to go kayaking and canoeing is to get out on the water, away from our crowded cities and congested lives. I've always marvelled that as small boaters we spend considerable amounts of time and energy building and buying our craft that are made from materials that contribute greatly to the very things we are trying to escape.

The question then is; How do we balance our desire to go boating with the facts that the resources that we use to build those boats are dwindling and ultimately degrading the planet?

You can view this as rhetorical in nature or take a direct response. The response can be from your gut or it can come from study, data and scientific understanding. What matters is that we, as practitioners of the craft, start looking to ways of how to deal with some of the inevitabilities of fewer trees and more complex methods for the supply of petroleum resources for our boatbuilding products.

I'm not intending this as a geo-political referendum at this point, though there is an inevitable path that will likely lead all of us there. More, I'd like to gain some understanding of the attitudes of the group as to how we solve some of these issues now so that boat builders of the future have the same opportunities that have been handed to me.

As posted:
Tom, It's great that you reference Hazen's book. He made some significant contributions to the boatbuilder's craft. As noted below on another posting, he has now taken the position of not supporting the building of boats with wood strip (and I also assume marine ply) with epoxy and glass.

After some research, I find that while his position is supported decently by considerable data with regards to vanishing species (trees) and depleted and overworked forests that supply traditional boatbuilding woods, he fails to completely flesh-out his argument from a more personal perspective. (I did not follow the link on his page to this end)

Perhaps this deserves a rather lengthy and seperately detailed thread for the purpose of discussing responsible boat building in this day and age?

Agree with Hazen or not, he still has data to support his argument and so far I'm still looking for the other side of the coin in this potential discussion.

Keep in mind that I say all this as I complete a fairly involved project building a performance sailing, canoe/trimaran in S&G epoxy glass build style.

We do need to look at this issue further as boat builders and work to mitigate the future problems of our chosen craft.

The forum is always open.

Chris Ostlind