Boats

Floating City was founded on the principle of building boats to start a floating, sustainable life/culture.

FC has built and adopted a number of boats including:

(Table of boats and status would be interesting. Perhaps with links to their separate pages.)

Maintenance of Metal Components
The Cave Boat and Big Cat are made from industrial gas/diesel tanks. As of September 2017 they have been quite neglected. People live on them and they are in a decent state but elements of their existence have been allowed to slip.

The Cave Boat's tanks have been painted and fibreglassed in places. They were also originally installed with sacrificial anodes that prevent rusting. These anodes will have most likely corroded into nothing by now and it is likely that for at least the past 2-3 years (prior to 2017) the tanks have been exposed to salt water. This means that in the worst possible eventuality the exposed areas have been corroding at 1.75 mm/year or so. It is also possible that given the placid water they have been sitting in the corrosion may have given way to "pitting".

Big Cat also has sacrificial anodes that are still visible and was originally painted with a solution of polystyrene and gasoline as a form of improvised epoxy. This epoxy has been observed to have flaked off with rusting occurring in exposed areas.

Determining tank integrity is very difficult. Possibly the easiest way would be to make a hacklinger gauge from a magnet and newtonmeter that measures the force needed to remove the magnet from the metal surface- thus denoting how thick the metal is.

Either way, to fix/maintain/save the boats we would need to remove them from the water. This would need to be done through the use of a crane that generally gets paid by the hour. It would remove the boat from the water, taking roughly two hours, put it onto large wooden beams from where the tanks could, and should, be fibreglassed using proper epoxy. Theoretically the tanks if done properly would then remain waterproof and groovy for 10-20 years. Epoxy, however, is devilishly expensive and a fund needs to be established.

Task List (as of 10 September 2017)
Winter is coming and we need to be ready.
 * 1) Move the cave boat
 * 2) Make anchor
 * 3) Prepare pulley
 * 4) Prepare steel wire
 * 5) Prepare tarp for hull
 * 6) Deal with leaking front section?
 * 7) Weatherproofing
 * 8) The Big Cat
 * 9) Fix leaks
 * 10) Alter roof so that it is not flat (and/or build a second roof)
 * 11) Insulate roof
 * 12) Patch holes in walls
 * 13) The Cave Boat
 * 14) Paint outside with cement paint (to eliminate cracks)
 * 15) Fix cracked windows with plexi & silicone
 * 16) Stuff cracks in skylight
 * 17) Install an extra layer of plastic inside the skylight
 * 18) Insulate stove wall with rockwall
 * 19) Electrics
 * 20) Connect to battery bank
 * 21) Find power source (windmill, land cable from Go Cart track, wood gas generator, etc)
 * 22) Toilet
 * 23) Gangway
 * 24) Bonus level: Bulid a platform under the skylight to create a second sleeping space