How to Build a Raft

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FLOTATION

My father then bought three one-inch-thick sheets of styrofoam at a hardware store for about eight dollars. Each sheet was 56 inches long and 24 inches wide. We turned the raft over and squeezed the styrofoam into the two-foot space between the support logs. We put three thin wooden slats over the foam to hold it in place, and nailed those boards to the logs.

Then we varnished the entire raft so it wouldn't soak up water and sink.

THE MAST AND BOOM

After we had finished the raft, I still wanted to add a sail. (This part is a little hard to describe, so you might have to look at my drawing of the sail and rigging to help you understand it well enough to do it yourself.) First, we cut two maple sticks. One, the mast, was 68 inches long and 1-1/4 inches thick. The other, the boom, was 36 inches long and 3/4 inch thick.

Then we drilled a hole, toward the front of the raft deck, that was a little narrower than the mast. We tapered the end of the long maple stick with a hatchet, and then hammered the pole into the deck. It felt like pushing a cork into a bottle. Next we lashed one end of the boom to the mast, at a spot about 14 inches above the deck, with nylon string.

THE SAIL

Nancy, my mother, helped me cut and hem a piece of sheet to make a triangular sail. It was 32 inches long at the bottom and 54 inches high.

To fasten the cloth to the boom, I brought the needle and thread through the sail, down and around the stick, up through the cloth again, down and around the boom again, and so on, until the, sail was completely attached. This is called whipstitching.

We connected the long edge of the sail to the mast by sewing six shower curtain rings to the 54-inch side of the cloth and slipping those rings over the mast.

THE HALYARD AND STAYS

At the top of the mast we screwed in a metal screw eye. Then we tied a nylon string onto the top of the sail and ran it through the screw eye and down to another screw eye we fastened into one side of the deck. This cord is called a halyard. It holds the sail up. To let the sail fall, we untie the string from the deck and let it go. To raise the sail again, we pull on the halyard and, when the sail is up, retie the string to its deck screw eye.

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