Sail Away - Parts of a Boat

 We have been trying out Yachting NZ's 'Kōkōkaha' sailing education programme. No better time, given Beach Week is upon us! Goals are being set and Māhutonga Matariki are about to get out on the water. 

In this rotation we thought about the different parts of a sail boat and how they contribute to the stability, power and movement of it. 

We connected to last year's learning around Polynesian Navigation. Many of us were aware of how double-hulled boats give more stability for ocean voyages. He waka hourua tēnā! 

Learning about the keel (or centreboard in the boats we'll use) was especially useful for those of us who worry about capsizing! We prototyped, testing our designs in an icecream container and blowing a gale at them. 

Float my Boat

Friday we got our hands busy shaping boats out of clay and tinfoil. We are explorng what a boat needs to be able to float and we made a few interesting discoveries on the way.

Sitara said that the material it is made from is important. Isabella believed that the leaf would float where the leaf with a hole it it would not.Other people thought floating was dependent on the shape of the object or the hull. Most thought that clay would not float and yet many groups had some success with this. We thought that next time we would use plastecine which will would probably be better as the clay got soggy quickly and, down it went!

We discovered that the boat will sink when the weight it is carrying is greater than the weight of the water it is displacing. The ancient Greek Scientist and thinker Archimedes developed the principle which is still considered to be true His principle states that the buoyant force on an object equals the weight of the fluid it displaces. Each boat was loaded up with bolts to see which was the most buoyant. The champion boat carried 46 bolts. Amazing?