We just need more foam.
Here’s a quote from the toyboater site that had the dinghy video on it.
"How can foam reduce buoyancy when it’s used in large blocks for floating piers? All those are, are big blocks of foam enclosed in plastic. "
I don’t think he was joking.
We just need more foam…
Never mind the quality, feel the width.
Nope, I did the opposite of this guy. It appears I have to repeat myself again for you. My cheap old dinghy was already filled with heavy foam, rotting and waterlogged, and I pulled it to replace it with plastic bottles while I was in there adding a mast step and inspection port for a sail kit. I was more following the concept of Plastiki https://www.wired.com/2009/11/plastiki-gallery/I
I think it’s cute you have been busy thinking about me looking into this. You must feel full and satisfied now that you have spent even more time trying to insult some strange gal on the net to validate your own self-worth.
As could be expected, in good fashion an error link. Probably clogged up by plastic bottles.
Waterlogged? And where is it you stated that previously?
“We go over our payload at times during provision runs when cruising and hulling very heavy provisions (such as gallon water jugs and beer/wine), so we sit lower then, right?”
You originally wrote: “We added an inspection port at the bow seat, we had to for the other mod (adding a custom sailing kit, so a mast step). We added water bottles, jammed em in there. We noticed some improvement so added another port to the stern seat and did the same.”
Don’t take it personally, I don’t think anyone thinks about you after laughing off your posts, you just happened to be the second best example of a WAFI who added some comedic relief to an otherwise sad and depressing thread.
right here [quote=“SailingCruiser, post:178, topic:48688, full:true”]
This old, beat up, small fiberglass tender with foam in the seats that was rotting and needed to go [/quote]
…at the end of the day all I was wondering, from the get-go, is if you all thought weight was an issue in the accident and I mentioned an experiment done.
They have been running since 1946 without incident, that is a pretty good safety record.
Ripley Entertainment purchased Ride the Ducks in December, but the duck boat business has a much longer history. Pattison, who has been president and director of Ripley Entertainment since 2007, said Ride the Ducks has operated for 47 years and the captain of the vehicle that capsized had 16 years experience.
He told CBS: “We’ve never had an incident like this or anything close to it.”
According to an article of Fox News the exhausts of the Branson DUKWs were placed very forward in the ‘bow’. See the picture in the article which does not show the exhausts very clearly and with some arrows that I cannot place. As for the incident it was not so much an issue, I think.
Paul, who said he inspected 24 duck boats in Branson last August, said the boats’ exhaust didn’t meet federal regulations.
Here we have a better view of the front. In this location, with a nose dive in a wave, the exhausts are likely to scoop up water.
This is what I would call a proper exhaust and in the right location!
I don’t think a downward-facing pipe is much of a scoop, but aside from that how is it going to scoop up water when exhaust is coming out of it? Wet exhausts right at the waterline are the normal thing for motorboats.
Anyway fact remains that seemingly the exhausts donot meet federal regulations, as stated by the inspector.
Paul, who said he inspected 24 duck boats in Branson last August, said the boats’ exhaust didn’t meet federal regulations.
I’ll be nice here:
Wet foam is heavier than air. Removing wet foam added buoyancy to your boat.
Bottles are heavier than air. Adding bottles reduced the buoyancy of your boat.
The bottles presumably had the tops on, you have some flotation there in case the boat is flooded or capsized. Not as good as dry foam, but better than wet foam.
NOTE: If the boat is not flooded in some way, you did not gain ANYTHING and LOST some.
So now we’re taking the word of some random “inspector” from a for profit company in a news article? Not that I am defending these “boats” at all, but it appears that since he agrees with the sentiment, we’re all just supposed to take his word without any background of who he is or how he got his qualifications? Seeing how the “designer” of the stretch DUKW didn’t have an qualifications, I don’t think taking the word of a DUKW industry “inspector” is prudent.
Department of Transportation regulations prohibit exhausts forward of the passenger compartment, Paul said. To comply with those standards, the exhaust should have been higher than or behind the passengers, he added.
This is undoubtedly a concern about monoxide poisoning, wouldn’t you say?
Here’s a story with a bit more content: Branson duck boat operator was warned in 2017 of dangers, inspector says
But hold on a minute here…nobody has mentioned flubber yet. If the bottles were filled with gaseous flubber it could likely fly and if the hull were made from solid flubber you could fill it with lead pigs and battleship armor and it’d never sink!
Note that unlike in Branson also here, like in other places, everybody had to wear life jackets.
The exhausts of the Ducks in Dublin, Ireland are also in a more acceptable location. With the exhausts placed forward, with no height, exhaust gasses are indeed bound to enter the interior with the driver and passengers.
However, like I said earlier it probably had nothing to do with the sinking. As far as I can see in the pictures and videos the motor kept running until the end. Otherwise the Duck would have veered off course and ended up with the broadside in the waves and surely gotten rolled. Therefore it is imperative that the motor in such weather conditions always keeps running as otherwise the results, by lack of reserve buoyancy, will be disastrous.
The issue of the boats not being in compliance was raised in the Seattle crash as well:
From the Seattle PI
The Missouri firm — which refurbishes two varieties of the World War II-era amphibious Duck vehicles — claimed it has long followed U.S. Coast Guard and state and local regulations but didn’t know that it also was subject to U.S. Department of Transportation regulation under the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act.
The NTSB is obviously a teethless tiger which should be ignored as much as possible. An uphill battle which they will always lose…
The agreement did not include a recommendation by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) to require that all 57 Stretch Ducks manufactured by RTDI and that are now operational nationwide be suspended from roadways until an independent third-party certified that their axles are safe.
A spokesman for Ride the Ducks International did not immediately have a comment about the agreement Tuesday. But in a statement posted on its website last month, the company said that the NTSB recommendation wasn’t necessary because the axle issue had been addressed.
Clearly a case of no strangers in Da House!
I prefer and propose to fill the voids not with flubber but with pressurized helium. True the boat has then to be heavily ballasted to hold it down in the water but that only helps to improve the stability. Clearly a win win situation…
