Boat made from recycled materials

Wildcat · Jul 26, 2015

I recently joined the Rotary Club here at Subic Bay and have just been tasked with designing and constructing a boat made from recycled materials. The race is coming up, so this thing has to be ready by next Monday. I'll have plenty of help putting it together, the college students who belong to the Rotaracts, an offshoot of the Rotary. I'm planning on using 5 gallon buckets filled with empty plastic water bottles in a catamaran configuration. It should be very stable in a 6' by 10' size. I did some research and 1 five gallon bucket gives 42 lbs. of flotation, so 12-14 buckets should give the 500 lbs. I need for 2 people. Here's my rough draft:

LukeTheJoker · Jul 27, 2015

Oh yeah! That is cool! Keep us updated with pics too please!

If you ever want some inspiration check out "The Beer Can Regatta" held in Darwin right up the top of Australia, all the boats must be made from recycled drinking contaniers, mainly beer and softdrink but occasionally there are one or two from iced coffee cartons too!

http://www.beercanregatta.org.au/

I love the rules:

THE TEN CAN-MANDMENTS

Thou shalt enter the event in the right spirit.
Thou shalt build the craft of cans.
The craft shall float by cans alone.
Thou shalt not drown.
Thou shalt not take the name of the craft in vain: any craft bearing signs or lettering that may be offensive will be barred.
Thou shalt not drift from the straight and narrow and end up at Mandorah. (Other side of the bay.)
Thou shalt not protest too much.
Thou shall honor thy Committee.
Thou shalt not commit adultery – nothing really to do with the Regatta, but it gives us an air of responsibility and respect.
Thou shalt go back and read the first can-mandment again.

Luke.

Wildcat · Jul 27, 2015

One of the professors and I are the crew. We have to paddle the thing an undetermined distance just offshore here at Subic Bay. Anything that falls off it is a penalty point, so I'll make sure everything is held together with an extra layer of tape and double up on the baling wire. :113:

The materials should all be provided this week with assembly continuing over the weekend if necessary. I'll take plenty of pics. The catamaran type configuration should be faster than the usual monohull style boats, so I'm hoping we will finish first.

kim_dude · Jul 27, 2015

Roughly 8 pounds of water per gallon so you should be good. Maybe craft some fairings to give you a little bit better hydrodynamics. Can you use a tiller for steering?

Wildcat · Jul 28, 2015

kim_dude said:
Roughly 8 pounds of water per gallon so you should be good. Maybe craft some fairings to give you a little bit better hydrodynamics. Can you use a tiller for steering?

There will just be the two of us paddling like crazy. I'll have to make the paddles from steel mop handles so they don't break. So we shouldn't need a tiller, no free hands anyway. I'll go through the pile of recyclables the students are putting together tomorrow to see what might work for fairings in the front.

Wildcat · Jul 28, 2015

Here's where I get some of the ideas, a trimaran I made from a Hobie 16 and Gcat 5.7 parts.

Wildcat · Jul 29, 2015

The thing actually worked well, the extra bracing and hull stabilized the Hobiecat and it was a fast secure ride.

Wildcat · Aug 6, 2015

It turns out I was supposed to get all the materials too! So I wasted the weekend waiting for parts to show up. So, in one day I scrounged all the junkshops and put it together with some help. I missed a couple classes but was excused. But they found 2 students who volunteered to paddle. They took it out in whitecaps right before a thunderstorn while I was in math class. After the breakage of some of the baling wire, we reinforced it and tried it again. Added a couple of colanders for streamlining. The race is this morning and hopefully the weather will be calm.