Day 4: Buoyancy Kicks Our Butt...

Let's see, where to begin, OK....

New logo design:

My Mom is helping me use photoshop to add a few details to our logo.  I think it looks really good, I like the new design.  We changed the background color from red to green, added Excalibur (King Arthur's sword), and added the Pendragon crest.

Also, I've decided to go with a flag.

Barrels:

As the title of this post suggests, we discovered that a barrel that is "fully" submerged in water will hold 400 pounds of weight.  For our raft however, and my sanity in the water, I would like to have my barrels only half submerged.  This brings our total weight for each barrel to about 200 pounds....crap. This means that we can only support about half of what we thought we could if we want the barrels to be half submerged.

But, we don't give up that easy...we decided we may need to add two more barrels to the design.  Diagram to come later...I love photoshop...

side view of raft, barrels half submerged.

although these figures are not completely accurate, you get an idea of how much work we've done.

Design:

So, we spent some time researching how much our raft will weigh and discovered that it will weigh about 1,000 pounds....

Quantity                     Board Size                    Weight                   Total Weight                  Price

70                               2x4x8                            11 lbs                     770 lbs                          $186.90

5                                 2x8x10                          27 lbs                     135 lbs                            $30.95

2                                 2x8x8                            21 lbs                       42 lbs                            $10.18

                                                                                                         

Total weight equals 947 lbs. not including hardware. Add in tax at $15.39 and the Total is $243.42  

I am estimating the raft to cost about $300 when all the hardware and boards are purchased.

We decided to go with untreated boards because of weight.  I am going to put some kind of water resistant sealant or oil on the boards.  Still researching that.

Research:

I decided what type of gear we should have on the raft today.  We will need:

• 1-type I fire extinguisher 
• 1-type II PFD (life jacket) for each person aboard the raft.
• A sound making device, (air horn, bell, whistle) I've decided on an air horn that can be bought at a local sporting goods store.  
• Lights, a flashlight can serve for our vessel lights but we plan to use the small solar lights.
• First Aid Kit, this is something that we are required to have.