With so many composite products on the market today, the Spirit team is frequently asked about the intricacies of building modern yachts with such a traditional material. In summary, wood is the only natural boat building material offering beauty, impressive strength to weight ratio, flexibility and durability.

However, we’re aware that here at Spirit we’re pretty biased, so here are the facts….

Wood offers incredible strength without the weight of most fibreglass products

If used in combination with epoxy resin saturation (as we do at Spirit), and when considering the overall yacht structure, wood is a far superior material to the modern composites used across our industry today. With its fibrous grain imbedded in a naturally intricate matrix, wood offers impressive strength without the accompanying weight of most fibreglass products.

When comparing the strength to weight ratio of a wooden yacht to a fibreglass composite boat it is necessary to consider the two construction processes. When building a fibreglass composite structure the hull is either made up of multiple layer of heavy E-glass, or a core is added such as foam or balsa. These cores increase the complexity and cost of the structure, and also require additional reinforcement in the form of pad layers where bulkheads and loaded structures touch the hull. As E-glass is heavy (but low cost) the result is an equally strong structure but with a weight penalty and none of us want to sail with excessive weight on board. With wood, the skin thickness comes as part of the material, with the added advantage that timber can sustain impacts with far less damage to the structure due to the wood’s complex multi-directional grain. At Spirit we also don’t have to use composite moulds as all our yachts are handcrafted using wooden ring frames, thus allowing us to tailor the design to the owner’s requirements.