We were in light winds and the hole in my dagger well was bigger then the drain plug hole. The starboard hull was a few inches under water all the way back to shore.
If you were "ripping", & the plugs were out, you would actually be draining water. When I worked in the Arctic we never bailed out our aluminum boats, just get them going & pull the plug, the water would mostly drain.
Archimedes principal gives us flotation, ie the amount of water displaced equals the amount of flotation.
So,to calculate flotation of noodles, you only need to know the volume they displace.
If you buy the cylindrical ones, the formula is:
V = pi r2 h so lets assume the noodle is 3" x 48"
V = 3.14 x (1.5x1.5) x 48 Note:3" diameter = radius of 1.5"
V= appx 348 cubic inches, that = 1.5 gallons. Water weighs 8.35 lbs per US gallon, so you get appx 12.5 lbs flotation for each noodle, minus the weight of the noodle. My kids noodles have a hole down the center, so you would have to plug each end to get the full value.
Remeber, that the noodles will give you zero flotation, if they are just left floating around, until they are actually submerged, meaning the hull is full, . I would try an inner tube from farm equipment built for spraying crops, the kind that have very skinny, very tall tires. These tubes can be worked through a pretty small hole, then inflated to low pressure. The tube will push up/down & wedge in place. Just google calculating volumes to get an idea of how much they will displace, you will be surprised at how much a lightly inflated 6" tube will float. Tubes are cheap to buy, tough, & a couple of them easily worked through a 4-6" access port in each hull will float the cat.
Plastic water bottle...bags of them... http://www.theplastiki.com/
Put a heavy duty plastic liner, like a battery liner and put the bottles in that way.
The H21 has factory installed bags with foam blocks in the forward hulls, they take up a good of the space forward of the cross beam.
They are not secured to the inside of the hulls, they move around, but from the outside you cant notice it. The ones in my boat dont have any evidence of being "funkedified", they seem okay after 22 years.
You could always stick a few of these in each hull.
http://www.rei.com/product/708992
After buying the expensive flotation bags from APS i found one of thse water bags in my garage and realized that they were very similar for 1/5th the cost of the APS bags.
edited by: TurboCat, Aug 11, 2010 - 10:08 PM
An inner tube does sound good they floated my ass down the river many times and never poped on the rocks in the river so they are pretty durable.
Edchris, Thats impressive!