"Larry" wrote in message
...
Bruce In Bangkok wrote in
:

Although, on second thought, he did say "sharp steel blade". I assumed
about 1/16th flat stuff for the blade, unsharpened. No need to sharpen
it like a razor.
Cheers,


My visualization was of something resembling steel claws or pointy steel
teeth to dig into the barnacle pile to gouge them loose....(c;]

It always amazes me how people think of a boat hull as some kind of
really strong, nearly indestructable material you can scratch but can't
break. I think of them as more like a thick eggshell you can nearly
poke your finger through if you poke it in just the right place.
Reality is something in between there, I suspect, much more fragile than
the average passenger would like to know about.....headed out of the
harbor into the Atlantic.

The CORA (Charleston Offshore Racing Association) insists everyone have
a big diaphram manual bilge pump so my buddy Joe asked if I would
install one for him. I showed up with my little battery-powered drill
motor with a hole saw the appropriate size for the fitting to go in a
line of fittings about 6" below the toerail. "How are you going to put
a hole in it with that?", he quipped. I picked my spot, pressed the
center bit of the hole saw where I thought it should go and pulled the
trigger. 30 seconds later, I backed the thin little plug out of the saw
and handed it to him. "It's only this thick.", I mused. "There ain't
much to 'em.", I continued as his mouth hung open. "Hold this in the
hole until I get the nut on the inside, will ya?", as he was staring
through the big hole I'd just punched into his plastic boat. The hull
couldn't have been more than 3/8" thick, maybe 4 layers of mat at the
most. Those Whales can move quite a bit of water...probably more if
you're in a panic watching it get lower and lower in the ocean.

Larry,
You can't judge all boats by that any more than you can judge all boaters by
the words of Wilbur.
Lots, if not most of the older boats have very strong hulls. When I
installed the thru hulls on my Phillip Rhodes Traveler I found about 2.5" of
hand laid glass in the bilge area. That boat was built by a commercial
fishing boat builder in the PNW in '79. My '63 Chris Craft "Caribbean" broke
loose of a very bad anchoring (by a paid "professional") when Floyd passed
by and ended up hard on the rocks on a causeway with some gouges and scrapes
in the gel. The gouges were at the most 3/8 deep, which may be death to
some, but not the tanks that Chris Craft built. The bulkheads were still in
place with the tabbing (pretty heavy duty and tabbing doesn't really
described the quality) unbroken. That boat was refitted and is still in
service.
I bet your little handheld computer that the ratio of boats that sink
because of failed equipment over hulls breaking up is probably 1,000 to 1. I
personally only know one sailor that lost his boat to the hull being
destroyed and he was run over by a frieghter!
I like the motion of a heavy boat and am willing to sacrifice light air
performance. Shipping containers have very hard corners.
Don't mean to offend anyone with a go fast light weight boat, but that's my
opinion and what I practice.