Matt,

Haven't heard from you in a while. Nice to have you back.

I remember that you knew my boat in her previous life. Take a look at her
now

http://home.maine.rr.com/rlma/Boat.htm

Have you heard anything about the previous owners? Last I talked to them,
one was having some medical issues and they weren't sure if they were going
to be able to go cruising. I've now lost contact.

Container ships sometimes have a slight negative GM, or used to 30 years ago
when we would watch them come down the harbor with a slight list, make the
turn, flop over, and continue on to sea with a slight list the other way.
They have enough freeboard and flare in the ends that the righting arms
would go positive after a couple degrees of heel. This loading made for
minimal rolling and least strain on the upper layers of boxes. You can only
get away with this in a very large ship though.

The mini houseboat fellow won't get very far trying to apply what he reads
about GM in a standard textbook to his problem. He should weight a sheet of
plywood or get it's weight, calculate how much he needs to make the cabin,
add about 50% for framing and other stuff, and then add the estimated weight
of anything else he plans to put on board. Next put a table on board with
the legs propped up a bit to get the top to about 75% of the cabin height.
Pile the table with the estimated weight and go aboard. If the motion feels
drunken and sluggish with very slow rools, the boat will probably be
uncomfortable as well as dangerous. Keep removing weight from the table
until a couple of people can walk around with the boat feeling solid and the
rail getting close to the water. Then figure if he can build a cabin
within that weight allowance.

Strong winds are another issue but it sounds like this is a lake boat to
spend most of its time on a mooring.

--
Roger Long