Opposite: Gelliceaux is the first example of the SW108, a sustainable build that from the outset was conceived and engineered to be a hybrid design. The yard’s hull production technique is a relatively low-waste process using moulds made with timber battens and chipboard (above). The paper-cored interior panels similarly offer a lower environmental footprint than most suitable alternatives
misleading. LCAs are designed to measure an organisation’s impact and find ways to reduce it, not to compare with other organisations, so each LCA is based on a different scope and set of parameters. Some results were surprising. ‘I
expected freight to have a high impact and electricity to be negligible,’ Dumbell says. ‘But freight turned out to be less than expected and the electricity we use in manufacturing is quite significant. That’s because South Africa is mostly powered by conventional energy.’ Materials accounted for 26 per cent of
the total footprint and power use during construction was 11 per cent. Energy use over the 30-year operational life of the yacht – mostly diesel consumption – was 63 per cent. Thus the breakdown was roughly a 40:60 split between building a new yacht and running it. One major reduction in environmental
impact has already been achieved. A 300kWp (kilowatt peak) array of solar panels on the roofs of the shipyard significantly reduces its consumption of mains electricity. At weekends, most of the power that the array generates is fed back
into the local grid. Southern Wind’s commercial director
Andrea Micheli says it’s important to note the stark difference between the LCAs of sailing yachts and motor yachts. The construction footprint is broadly similar but the footprint of the motor yacht during operational use is massively higher. ‘Even when motoring, a sailing yacht is still far more fuel efficient,’ he says. ‘For a delivery passage of a thousand miles we’re talking about 3,300 litres versus 25,000 litres of fuel for a similar size semi-displacement yacht. The operational carbon footprint of such the motor yacht is seven times higher.’ For an ocean passage, sailing makes an enormous difference. Southern Wind yachts routinely use less than 7,000 litres of fuel on the 7,000-mile delivery trip from Cape Town to the Mediterranean while the same motor yacht would burn about 175,000 (25 times more). He also points out that if the LCA had
been calculated with a 50-year use cycle, (as per a study commissioned by ICOMIA
and presented in November 2023 at METS, the Marine Equipment Trade Show), the footprint of operational use would be an even larger proportion of the total. The true footprint of carbon fibre is
‘Our yachts sail well in just five to six knots of wind’
complicated. On one hand it’s the main part of the construction footprint. On the other hand, as Micheli explains, the operational footprint would be significantly larger without it. ‘Many yachts
that are a similar size are about 10 tons heavier with the same sail area and they need at least 8kts of wind to start sailing,’ he says. ‘Ours sail well in five to six knots.’ The difference might seem small but in a typical Mediterranean season it increases the number of sailing days significantly. The next phase is using the LCA to
reduce the footprint of the shipyard and its yachts. ‘We are going to start active procurement,’ Dumbell says. 'Preference will be given to suppliers who can support with good data amore environmentally suitable product.’ He is also looking at systems integration to tie the LCA database andmodelling software into � SEAHORSE 71
GUILIANO SARGENTINI
CARLO BARONCINI
CARLO BARONCINI
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