Chapter 43 - 16: Setting Sail
Carving mortises is a meticulous task. Unlike sawing, which requires brute force, it is tedious and slow, and cannot be rushed.
On the afternoon of October 3rd, Chen Zhou worked continuously on the deck.
The weather was favorable, with no clouds in sight even in the evening.
Not wanting to waste such a rare good weather, Chen Zhou hung an oil lamp on the deck and continued to work overtime under the dim light.
From morning till night, he worked for about ten hours.
Finally, the four frames lying across the deck took shape.
The tenons at the front and rear of the side frames, the mortises for connecting tenons at the front and rear frames were completed, and some of the mortises for inserting boards on two rows were also carved.
Before resting late at night, estimating that the tide was almost high, Chen Zhou measured the waterline once more.
According to his observations, the tide rises and falls twice a day.
Once around midnight, with a rapid rise, reaching its peak in about two hours, then gradually falling.
The other after the sun rises in the morning, with a slow rise, not reaching the highest point until after noon, then gradually receding until sunset, when all is silent.
The midnight tide rises too quickly and with no light in the darkness, making it unsuitable to float the raft along the tide.
However, the tide in the morning is useful, as its long cycle means there’s no worry about the raft being stranded while transporting materials to the island, which is quite reassuring.
Drawing the rising and falling curves on a tide chart, Chen Zhou silently calculated how many times he could transport goods each day.
If he got up in the morning, loaded the cargo onto the raft, and set off around eight or nine in the morning, he would arrive on the island in about a dozen minutes, unload the supplies, and return immediately without staying.
The return journey would definitely be upstream, requiring more effort, possibly taking half an hour or even an hour to row, plus the time for loading and unloading the supplies, making a round trip about three hours.
Calculating like this, excluding necessary times for eating and sleeping, in ideal weather without wind or rain, he could transport goods three times a day at most.
Assuming a total weight of 200kg per trip, he could transport 600kg of supplies to the island each day, a transportation efficiency far surpassing Robinson’s simple raft.
With this in mind, Chen Zhou did a simple mental calculation.
According to the book, Robinson boarded the ship on October 1st and continued to make disposable rafts daily, transporting supplies to the island at a rate of once per day, until the day before the ship was destroyed by a storm, which was October 24th.
Robinson’s raft was made by tying cut masts together, able to carry only a few dozen kilograms of cargo each time. In those twenty-four days, he managed to transport at most 2000kg of supplies ashore.
To anyone, 2000kg of various supplies is not a small amount.
Used sparingly, it could last for years.
But Chen Zhou could achieve far more than this.
Calculating on the slowest and worst-case scenario.
From officially starting work on the 2nd until launching the raft, it would most take eight whole days, and he could officially transport the first batch of goods on the morning of the 10th, with only 12 days of safe transportation time remaining, he could still accomplish 36 trips, or 7200kg of supplies.
This is three times the amount of supplies Robinson transported.
Even if affected by the weather, failing to meet expectations, surpassing Robinson would be easy.
As the online expert who drew the raft blueprints said, to do a good job, one must first sharpen their tools. In a ten-thousand-meter race, even if a car doesn’t start as fast as a bicycle, the eventual winner will be undisputed.
The calculation results were very reassuring.
With a sense of assurance, after dinner, Chen Zhou fell asleep filled with expectations for the future.
Staying up late led to waking up late, and he awoke to bright daylight.
October 4th, the fifth day of the challenge began.
Having gradually adapted to the new life rhythm, Chen Zhou followed his familiar route, from the first mate’s room, to the kitchen, to the deck, and began a new day’s work.
Today’s tasks varied in weight.
With energy in the morning, he needed to saw out the lower frame. In the afternoon, feeling tired, he needed to continue carving the mortises for inserting boards on the front and rear frames.
If he could finish the tasks ahead of time, he still had to make the connectors for linking the top and bottom layers of the raft in the evening.
These small items weren’t large, with tongues at both ends—requiring 20 for the front and rear frames, and 30 for the side frames—primarily serving as nails and adhesives.
According to Chen Zhou’s idea, gaining experience from making the first few would make subsequent production faster.
With a mixed feeling of either pain or numbness, the continuous sound of sawing echoed around Chen Zhou’s ears.
Sawing wood and carving mortises were tasks he’d done, but making connectors caused agitation.
Because the wooden blocks were only three fingers thick and as big as a palm, fixing them for carving was troublesome.
Furthermore, with poor lighting conditions at night, discerning the marks made by charcoal sticks, repeatedly comparing whether the tongues on the wood blocks were symmetrical, Chen Zhou felt his eyes would go blind.
And that wasn’t the worst. The worst was that after making these 50 connectors, he still had to carve 100 corresponding mortises between the upper and lower frames.
Hungry in the evening, making two connectors by the light of an oil lamp, Chen Zhou finally couldn’t hold on any longer, dropping his chisel with a clang and lying flat on the deck.
Thinking about the seemingly endless carving, thinking about the forty-eight identical tasks remaining after finishing these two connectors, thinking about the more mortises to carve after finishing those forty-eight connectors, he was overwhelmed with a boundless fatigue and lethargy.
It was like a long marathon, where as a participant, the rules did not allow him to run on his feet, forcing him to use his arms to inch forward.