Flotation

[old rigger]

Flotation is not done by any manufactures I know of. The main purpose For some kind of floatation device is put into the bow, is where the rubrail is mounted on the boat, all the air pocketed in the bow will escape thur the mounting holes for the rubrail. The inner tube traps the air so it can't leak out. Budlight
This thread is too long to read and LVjetboys replys are giving me a headache again. lol
Me&Mrs Budlight are mistaken, all boat manufactures have to install floatation that meet coast gaurd standards. It's been that way since the early 70's. This only covers boats under 21 feet long.
The reason that little 18 spectra posted earlier in this thread is still floating is because it's running a belly tank, and the sides of the hull, (and the bow)where the tanks would normaly go, are full of pre formed foam blocks.
At Tahiti and Hawaiian we used the same style pre formed flotation to fit in front of the bulkhead. At Rogers, we used the long plastic tubes filled with tiny styrofoam balls. Had a big hopper filed with those messy things and a little iron seamer that would seal off each tube. At Advantage we used the little pillow sized inflated balls. A Warlock we didn't have any boats small enough to have to install floatation and at Howard (this was in the late 80s) the new owners of the biz didn't bother to install it.
Coast Gaurd requires only the very tip of the bow to remain afloat for a pre determined amount of time. I don't remember the amount of time or how they came to figure it out. This was for all inboards, meaning jets, I/Os and v-drives. Outboards had to float level, like that spectra 18 was floating, which was a mother focker to do and still offer some room in the boat for storage. It was a crap shoot. Most builders just stuffed the nose full of what ever their choice of floatation was and were done with it. You took your chances, the coast gaurd would buy one of your boats, with out you knowing it was being bought by them, and they would test it. Waste of a perfectly good boat. They'd drill the deck full of holes, pull the engine, replaced with matching weight, and sink it. The Tahiti, and the Hawaiian passed when I worked there, the Rogers passed with it's sacks of micro balls. I don't remember which shop it was at, (well I do remember, but I'm not going to say, lol) but one of them failed the test, and it only failed because it got out of the shop with no floatation installed. What a bitch when that happens. You have to notify ALL buyers that bought that model and retro fit each boat with the correct floatation, or prove that the boat has it. If the boat's out of state, the builder pays the charges to have the boat shipped both ways. Big bucks. It can kill a small company.

[Wet Dream]

why is that when i sank my old boat at havasu 12 years ago the guy who was pulling my boat out was ordered to let the boat sink cop had to go to a call the boat helping out reved up and towed me out again and kept going.
Punctuation helps!! There is a bigger picture to this guys. Look at it from all angles. The cops pretty much have to tell you to let it go. You are towing a boat that doen't have enough flotation to keep it up on its own. Does the tow boat you're in have enough to float BOTH boats? Doubtful. The towboat is now at risk of being taken under itself from the weight and drag of the sinking boat. Whether the call of the cops is right or wrong, gotta look at it from the safety aspect.

[dmontzsta]

This thread is too long to read lol
This is true.
I need to add flotation to my boat. Can someone tell me what I should use? in short. thanks.