Blisters?  Delamination?  Burning?  Wood?  Balsa Core?  Rot?

Whether you're a Navy SEAL or a weekend fisherman everytime you take a boat further from the shore than you can swim (farther for a SEAL than for a dad!) you are in a fairly dangerous place.  Unlike a car or a motorcycle that you can pull over on the side of the road and run from you are an island unto yourself when on a boat.

If you end up in the water (even in warm climates) you are in a heap of trouble.  Boating safety and boat construction are IMPORTANT.  Really important. Vitally important.

Fiberglass has no set standards for hull construction.  None.  Zilch.  Nada. From cheap products badly assembled to high quality products assembled by expert craftsmen - you cannot know how strong, how uniform, how well built your boat is.  Even in high quality construction there can be places where the boatbuilding worker missed a spot or two.  The above pictured boat with the huge delamination is a 63' yacht built by a very well-know fiberglass builder.  Does this make you feel safe?





That's a multi-million dollar boat coming apart at the seams!  Underway!

Plate aluminum alloy on the other hand is a completely known material.  What do I mean by "known"?  Well...

It means that the plate's properties are produced under highly controlled circumstances and have a testable and certified end product.

We can give you more data on the qualities and properties of a 1/4" plate of 5083 (H32) aluminum alloy than you'd care to read:

Proof Stress 0.2% (MPa)      240
Tensile Strength (MPa)   330
Shear Strength (MPa)         185
Elongation A5 (%)              17
Hardness Vickers (HV)         95
Density                                    2.65 g/cm3
Melting Point                            570°C
Modulus of Elasticity                 72 GPa
Electrical Resistivity                   0.058x10-6 Ω.m
Thermal Conductivity                121 W/m.K
Thermal Expansion                   25x10-6 /K

What are these datapoints for a fiberglass panel?  You can't know.  It's unknown. Not knowable.  It changes from day-to-day, from builder-to-builder, from boat-to-boat.   Extraordinary.  They'd never put up with this in the automotive or aircraft industry but since the marine industry is so small, well,  - its ignored.

Military and government buyers need testable, known and very tough boats - they almost always use aluminum alloy plate hulls for their small boats.

Next:  Fire!

Every sailor in the Navy will tell you of the Navy's preoccupation with firefighting.  Being on your own island when its on fire is a scary and bad place.  They're worried about it on ships made of nonflammable steel.

Now imagine your on a hull made from an extremely flammable material - fiberglass...










Scary, Huh?  I've seen a fiberglass boat on fire and the things burn like crazy.  Aluminum?  Nope.  can't burn - nonflammable.  To melt the stuff you'd have to raise its temperature to 1050 degrees Fahrenheit!

Next:  Wood!

Lots of fiberglass builders like to incorporate wood into their boats.  The stuff is relatively cheap and strong.  A good idea?  Nope.  encapsulated wood in fiberglass is rot just waiting to happen:





















What makes this little bugaboo so bad is that you can't see the problem until its too late - a failed transom, floor, deck....yuck!

So aluminum alloy as a boatbuilding material, as opposed to fiberglass, is a know, testable, nonflammable, strong, durable and proven boatbuilding material.

If you're spending a lot of money on a boat and putting the most valuable thing you have ( you, your family, your employees lives) onboard - wouldn't it be a good idea to have it be aluminum alloy?

We think so...