I have been planning on doing something with my dock space in Miami. It's 47 feet long, and very close to the Haulover Park inlet to the Atlantic. Plan A was to get a Motor boat, but I just don't want the responsibility. Plan B is to let someone keep their motor boat there if I can have a copy of the keys.
This is about PLAN C... and I am thinking that it is the best solution yet. I want to build a floating Dock and keep my laser and a Kayak on it. I much prefer sailing dingys to Motor boats anyway. And I can still get a little boat latter.
Attached are some CAD renderings I did in Google SketchUp. Its been a while since I used AutoCad, and I Thought this would be a good chance to test out what Google is doing. Google SketchUP is a free as a basic package, but is about $500 for the Pro version. Its not a bad program, but very different than AutoCad, and I am not sure about the 3DMax integration. Having a tablet would really help. I am not sure I would recommend it, But it will get the job done. I am a little disappointed because I wanted to do some rendering animations, but no such luck in the free version.
The Dock idea is a pretty simple solution. My idea is to do a 10X20 floating dock with polystyrene flotation.
Each block is 7'' high and can float 700 pounds. Four floats should handle 2800 lbs. But I can bump the float sizes up to 10" and add another 800 lbs to Buoyancy.
I think the lumber is going to run about 600lb's including joists, and planking. The kayak and sailboat will run about 300lb's. 4 people at 200lb's each, and the total vertical load should be under 2000lb's.
By design, I want the free board ( distance from the top of the deck to the water line ), to be around 8 inches. This should make it easy to launch and recover boats to the deck.
if someone wants to correct my design, or make suggestions, please do...
To all those whom I have told I will never pick up another hammer to build something ever again... well... old habits die hard.
