Chapter 40 - 15: Shipbuilding
"Could it be that the raft plan was a mistake from the start, just a wishful fantasy of the friends?"
Slowly crouching beside the broken rail of the bow, his eyes vacant.
Chen Zhou’s thoughts were a jumbled mess, questioning his choices.
"Did Robinson ever consider this issue, and in the end, he found it unfeasible and chose to give up..."
"It shouldn’t be, since Robinson Crusoe is written in the first person, all of the protagonist’s thoughts are reflected in the book.
From beginning to end, Robinson never thought of creating a semi-permanent raft that would last forever."
"Moreover, I am different from Robinson."
Looking at the undulating sea, Chen Zhou sighed.
How could he not know that simply throwing wood into the sea and tying it into a raft while swimming would be easier, yet he couldn’t do it!
With his swimming skills, just treading water with his legs while freeing up his hands to work would be a sure way to drown.
"Ugh~"
"I’m really anxious, waiting online. Is it still possible to improve my swimming skills starting now?"
After pondering this dejectedly for a moment, Chen Zhou still found it hard to abandon the raft plan.
He felt that putting the raft in the sea wasn’t some world-famous math puzzle that only a genius could solve.
There’s still enough time, with all the tools available, there must be a suitable method. It’s just that he’s been overthinking it and hasn’t thought of it yet.
"Could a living person really be stifled by urine?"
Temporarily calming his mind and reducing the pressure, Chen Zhou returned to the mid-deck, chiseling the uneven edges of the frame while continuing to seek inspiration and think of solutions.
Sawdust flew, gradually piling into little hills.
As the sun set in the west, a day’s time passed in the blink of an eye.
Putting away his tools, Chen Zhou walked toward the ship’s side to observe the tides when he suddenly had a lightbulb moment, coming up with a bold idea.
That is, to directly find a suitable height and appropriate location on the side of the cabin, then cut a gap over two meters wide in the cabin without compromising the structural strength of the ship.
Once the parts of the raft are made, they will be moved to the gap beside the cabin and then assembled and launched into the sea there.
The key to this method is that the opening in the cabin must be higher than the sea level to prevent seawater from flooding the cabin.
But the gap also cannot be too high, as being too high would obstruct the launching of the raft.
Additionally, since the sea rises and falls daily, the water level is not constant. A maximum value must be taken and topped up by half a meter as a buffer to ensure safety.
Rehearsing the "Ship Dismantling and Rafting" plan repeatedly in his mind, Chen Zhou ultimately didn’t find any apparent flaws.
Regarding the issues of the opening position conflicting with the cabin floor height or the raft being too heavy to move, he devised corresponding solutions.
If the suitable opening position happened to be between two layers of the cabin, with one side being the floor and the other the ceiling, he would dismantle that partition, stack wooden crates to an appropriate height, and create a simple platform for placing the raft.
If the raft was too heavy to push into the sea, he could build a sloped platform in advance and place a row of rolling logs on the slope, using a crowbar to lever the back of the raft into the sea.
Thus far, the "Ship Dismantling and Rafting" plan was quite comprehensive, and all the major problems were considered. If other unforeseen issues arose during implemation, he should still be able to resolve them.
Now all he lacked was the timing of the tide’s rise and fall and the height of the tidal peak.
Initially, Chen Zhou recorded the tidal patterns only to ride the raft ashore during high tide and board the ship during low tide, but now he had another requirement. He had to record the data more comprehensively and in detail.
Furthermore, to make the data more reliable, he also planned to draw a tide chart.
Taking a dry stick every day when the tide reached its highest point, he would immerse it in the sea to measure it once to determine the rise and fall trend of the tide.
In addition, he prepared a long, dry rope with a weight tied to one end, then tied it to the ship’s guardrail to hang it into the sea.
As long as the weather was clear, wherever the highest tide reached, it would wet the rope, and by observing the rope, he could grasp whether the tide’s intensity changed over 24 hours. If the tide’s momentum surged more at night than during the day, he could adjust the height of ship dismantling in advance.
Of course, because the sea’s humidity is heavy, just relying on the rope for data collection might not be rigorous enough. The measurements from the dry stick were needed as well to ensure reliability.
After much contemplation, he finally solved the problem that had been bothering him.
With the burden lifted from his heart, Chen Zhou felt noticeably lighter.
Walking leisurely to the side of the ship, he saw the sea level turned fiery red by the setting half-sun, and the sky already displaying a bright moon. Chen Zhou rubbed his stomach, planning to have dinner and then slowly wait for the tide to reach its highest point.
𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺
Before that, he had to tidy up the tools and materials on the deck.
Having already witnessed the unpredictable changes in sea weather yesterday, Chen Zhou didn’t dare to risk the night’s weather staying clear.
He pulled a tarpaulin over the pile of materials, then brought several empty barrels to press down on the corners of the tarp, both to prevent the wood tools from getting wet by the rain and to stop the tarp from being blown away by the wind.
Then he took an empty burlap sack and packed in the wood chips, sawdust, and cut-off corners piled on the deck.
These wood residues were excellent kindling material and could be used as tinder. Left on the deck, they’d eventually be blown away by the wind, and Chen Zhou couldn’t stand such waste.
After finishing these last tasks, Chen Zhou left the deck.