Products
Teak has long been the most sought-after wood for yacht decking, due to its incredible durability, stability, and attractive appearance.
However, S.E. Asia’s natural teak forests have in the past been over-exploited, making careful sourcing of timber from only well managed forest essential.
At Ocean Yacht Decks we strive to source our teak timber from only the best managed natural forest and plantations.
We are an FSC certified company and adhere to FSC principles of sustainable and ethical timber production.
Plantation teak from Indonesia
Teak is not native to Indonesia but is naturalised in some islands, such as Java, having been first planted many hundreds of years ago. As such, rather than ancient forest most of the teak trees exist in plantations. Many such plantations have old stands of teak trees, yielding timber that is almost an equivalent standard to forest grown timber.
The state-owned Forestrty company, Perhutani, manage Java’s forestry with a commitment to sustainability. Indonesian timber is recognised in EU and UK by the FLEGT scheme (Forest Law Enforcement, Governance & Trade), which ensures high standards of sustainable and ethical timber production. Additionally, all the Indonesian teak we use is covered by the FSC 100% certification.
Forest-grown teak from India
A sapling, rising up from the forest floor, starved of sunlight, grows slowly and perfectly straight, reaching up to the canopy above. The resulting timber is dense with tightly packed growth rings. For the deck of a yacht this is the premium wood, it’s density making it extremely hard wearing. However careful forest management is required to extract a limited number of trees without harm to the forest. India has such careful forest management in a number of state-controlled forests.
The teak we buy from these sources is covered by FSC “Controlled Wood” system, which whilst not as reliable as FSC 100%, provides reassurance that the felling of this timber did not contribute to deforestation. In the future we hope to be able to offer FSC 100% timber also from well managed Indian forests.
Cork Decking
Cork comes from the bark of the Cork Oak tree. It’s use for yacht decking has so many advantages it is hard to list them all!
The bark is peeled from tree without harming it, and regrows, with a harvest every 10 – 12 years. As the bark regrows the tree continues to grow and to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere, making cork production carbon negative. For each ton of cork harvested some 70 tons of CO2 are absorbed by the growing tree.
As a yacht decking it is comfortable under foot, not getting as hot as teak, but is equally durable, resistant to rot and decay.
Using cork sheet in very large dimensions, enables complete freedom in design of the yacht deck, without the limitations of bending in teak planks and gluing component parts. Being made of granules, held together with a water-resistant binder, it can be invisibly jointed and repaired.
It is labour saving in fabrication and installation, saving time and cost.
We highly recommend cork as the best alternative yet to traditional timber yacht decks.
GREENTEAK
GREENTEAK, based in Thailand, came up with an interesting way of maximising the yield of plantation grown teak trees. As such trees are felled much younger and yield smaller boards than forest grown trees, GREENEAK developed the technique of first slicing the timber into veneers, which are joined into 4m lengths and then bonded together with very high pressure, into large dimension solid boards.
The resulting “engineered” wood, is perfectly straight, defect free, and the completely regular straight joint lines give the impression of tightly packed growth rings and give a very modern and homogenous appearance. Perfectly suited to modern design concepts, this material can be invisibly repaired in service. It has FSC 100% certification.
Alternatives
We are always on the lookout for other teak alternatives and can currently offer other timbers such as Iroko and Doussie, always from ethical and sustainable sources. We remain unconvinced by most “synthetic” wood alternatives made from Polyurethanes and PVC’s.
Replacing natural wood with petrochemicals seems like a backwards step, but we are investigating synthetic decking products made from recycled materials.