My Boat

["D. Buchner" <Buchner@mega-com.com>]

>I was just wondering what your will look like?   You said sci fi in one of
>your letters...what kinds of materials will you use?  What kind of
>internal support?
>Gareth Block

You sent this directly to me, but I'm replying to the whole list because I
ended up writing such a lengthy description and I thought I'd just add it
to the discussion and set myself up for ridicule and warnings about how
dangerous this is.

Mind you, I'm in northern Minnesota. I've set my sights a lot lower (well,
actually, *higher* or shallower...) than many of the folks on the list.
Lots of lakes here, most of them not terrifically clear water and (the ones
I'm focusing on) often pretty shallow. My thoughts lean mostly toward
"sneaking" around just under the surface - not deep diving. In fact, I'm
considering starting out borrowing from that old Mechanix Illustrated
design, with pontoons which stay on the surface, and the main hull hangs
from those on wing/strut things, and air circulates through hoses running
down the struts. Anyway, because of all this, I'm counting on strength of
the double-hulled roundness of my 200 gallon stainless steel milk tank,
without additional internal support.

I'm not sure in what context I said sci-fi, but I expect I was just
thinking about the overall spaceshippiness of riding around in a dark
little enclosed space, peering out portholes and pushing buttons. Of
course, if I do use the safer floats-on-the-surface configuration, I
suppose I'll have a Star Trek-ish look going.

	Look like? Well, the tank itself is a pudgy little cylinder, 5 1/2
feet long and 3 feet in diameter. The round ends are curved. It has an
approximately (small) person-sized hole in the middle of the top. I want to
build a little "conning tower" over this, just enough to keep waves out and
stick my head up into to look out. This is where the window will go, so as
not to cut into the lovely stainlessness, and the hatch in the top. I'd
probably make this out of wood covered with fiberglass, because I have a
lot of both.
	Then there'll hafta be changable-ballast tanks attached to the
sides near the top, probably round, and with a flattish "deck" built over
them and the top of the tank. I've been collecting lots of different sorts
of tanks for this: fire extinguishers, captive-air pressure tanks, and so
on - but I don't have a matched pair yet, and I don't know which I'll use
yet and I haven't figured out how to figure out how much weight I'll need
to change to sink/swim as much as I want.
	The tank has four legs on the bottom, and I plan to hang a long
keel/ballast/thing by means of two "Y"s from these, to make the wessel
heavy enough to submerge and keep it upright. I have quite a collection of
Heavy Things by now: the core Heavy Thing being the giant
nearly-square-tube body of an old log splitter, to be augmented in
heaviness by some combination of salvaged wheel weights, miscellaneous
mysterious chunks of iron picked up in my sister's yard, and a HUGE (4"
diameter by 5 feet long) and VERY very heavy round chunk of steel from
behind the shop at the art college.
	Lastly, I will build some sort of superstructure-framework-bracket,
which will bolt to convenient existing bolts on the back end of the tank,
to mount an electric trolling motor and perhaps a rudder.

To start with, I'm just going to attach enough weight to get it to ride
about halfway down in the water, and the motor, and stick my head out and
drive it around that way and see how it behaves (still too tippy,
impossibly sluggish, etc.). That's this summer - along with maybe building
a trailer.


 - David
<Buchner@mega-com.com>