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Construction
Once the canoe body of the hull is complete, the keel goes on. We wanted to minimize draft, so we worked with Waterline to design and create a flattened bulb keel to keep the center of gravity as low as possible. It's unlikely the winglike shape does much hydrodynamically, but the increase in stiffness makes up for it. The keel shoe is a steel plate 11 feet long and 33 inches wide, 1 inch thick. Molten lead was poured into the bulb after the hull was righted. The keel stub is the fuel tank. The lead-containing bulb is sealed; fuel and lead don't contact one another. As an interesting aside, we investigated using depleted uranium (DU) as an alternative to lead due to its considerably higher density (lead is 700 pounds/cubic foot, DU is 1100). This would eliminate the need for a bulb, as the reduced volume of DU would easily fit in the fin keel without the bulb. DU is an alpha particle emitter and isn't dangerous when it's properly encased in nickel. It turned out that, yes, we could legally obtain and use DU for our ballast. The sticking point, however, was the price - US$30/pound, versus $0.30/pound for lead. Somehow, the prospect of investing around a quarter of a million dollars for the ballast didn't appeal to us, so RED's keel is filled with lead... |
