Fate of the mega-yacht

I'm curious what will happen to one of the really big super yachts when it gets too old to put to sea again. Old wooden yachts could be scrapped for wood. But everything seems to be made of composite materials that would seem to be hard to recycle.

What happens to those ships and their hulls?

Yeah, a lot of old sailing vessels were torn apart for their timbers. I think mostly for furniture and things like picture frames. A lot of old sailing vessels that I've seen smashed on rocks are just un-salvageable by the very nature of their fate. It breaks the heart to see those photos of something like an aged clipper torn asunder because she got too close to the rocky coast line.

I ask this question because a lot of Youtube stuff I've seen shows some boats built of advanced polymers, and knowing a little about material science, it just seemed difficult to recycle that kind of material into a coffee maker or TV casing or something.

I guess just in general, what will be the fate of some of the specialized yachts, I wonder. Like all those racing trimarans, or the ones built specifically to break speed records. Or even Spielberg's yacht, or that Russian billionaire's yacht. At some point they'll become too old to operate. All ships get that way. I'm just curious what will become of them.

Who, me personally? I don't own anything made from a ship that I know of.

I can't recall too much of my visit to the Constitution, but out here in San Francisco, the maritime museum has lots of older vessels you can tour. One of them is clipper, and it seems in good order. In fact all the ships there are well maintained, and that museum doesn't earn a whole lot of money either. I think they survive on donations and grants.

Interesting replies. I'm not a big environmentalist or anything, but I'm wondering if maybe some of the vessels to old to serve anyone might be sunk to form coral reefs like a few navy vessels. Just a thought. I personally love ships. Seeing one scrapped is pretty sad. There used to be a small fleet of escort carriers some 25 years ago in Alameda. You can't use an escort carrier for much else other than ferrying Helcat prop-driven fighters without serious (and expensive) modification. But they were sold off and scrapped much to my disappointment.

Those ships are built of steel, so they'll get transformed into something useful. But John Staluppi's special speed mega yacht is made of special polymers. Could you really mix that stuff in with concrete or other construction material? Once it reached the end of its life could you sink it, or turn it into an on the water bed and breakfast or something?

FISHTIGUA, wow. I hate to ask, and I should know better, but is that thing real?

Anyway, I'm guessing carbon, even though it's very reactive, isn't as easily recycled as other materials. I guess a sunken fiber-glass boat would be toxic to life under the waves, or potentially so.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

I don't really know. I guess I'm asking if that stuff would be.

I figured with all of the other chemicals used in bonding the fibers together, or the stuff that was mixed with the carbon (I seem to recall that the actual carbon fibers themselves are plastic polymers with all kinds of compounds to form a solid), that there would some leeching of those chemicals into the surrounding waters.

Does anybody know?