Containerised boat

Hello all,

I need to build boat to go down the Mississippi for a record attempt. It needs to be a raft (defined as a flat buoyant structure of timber or other materials fastened together, used as a boat or floating platform). It also needs to be containerised in a 20' container prior to putting it in the water in Minneapolis and it needs to accommodate four for a month and be constructed by those four people.

I've done this with two people before on a barrel raft and its was seriously hard work getting it down the river. I don't intend to do it that way again but it needs to technically be a raft so I'm looking at pontoon boat hulls. My initial thoughts are a 20' x 12' platform with a relatively heavy payload as its an enclosed cabin on a timber frame.

What I need initially is some recommendations of hull designs or prefabbed hulls I can purchase so I can design the rest around that and what kind of HP i would need to move it at 10mph. (estimates at this stage I know - ball park figures, not taking into account head winds etc)

Thanks in advance for any help!

 

Should be no problem to find a suitably fast raft - the Spindrift II trimaran, AC34 catamarans, MOD 70 tris all fit that definition, no?

If it needs to pack into a 20 foot container and do 10 mph under power I wonder about the motorised catamarans that seem to be widely used for coaching competitive rowing teams these days. They seem to have largely replaced coaches riding bicycles along the towpath, steering round pedestrians with one hand, holding a megaphone with the other, as I remember from my childhood in Cambridge, UK. Typically these catamarans seem to do about 10mph and have 10HP (or 9.9HP) outboard motors. You might need more power if you are heavily loaded. Some of these craft seem to be home made by de-rigging and adapting an old sailing beach cat which can probably be purchased fairly cheaply.

 

The standard Width of a conteiner 20' is 8', no 12.
So i can not undestand what you mean.

 

Is that 10 mph on the water or the bottom? For example, at the Memphis area the river can run at 28 mph during high water. It will run 8 at low water.

 

I think you will find that the inside dimensions of a 20ft container are 19ft 4in by 7ft 6in by 7ft 6in. although they do vary slightly.