Phuket students build boats for Bangkok
PHUKET: Student volunteers at the Phuket Technical College are rushing to build at least 200 glass fibre boats that will be sent to central Thailand for use by flood victims. Each boat can take about six people.
Tuesday 1 November 2011, 06:38PM
Supported by the Ministry of Education, the project, called “Donate Boat [sic] for Flood Victims”, was started in mid-October.
According to the leader of the project, Karan Panitpichetwong, boat makers from Phuket Fibreglass Shipyard and professors from Phuket Technical College took two weeks to develop a new design for the donated glass fibre boat, which is lighter than a standard boat made from the same material.
The shape of the boat has also been specially designed to be ultra-stable, to make it easier for people with no previous experience of using boats to handle.
Since October 27, about 20 third-year students studying ship construction as their major have been turning out at least 20 boats a day.
The first shipment of 100 completed boats will be trucked on November 1 to Bangkok, where they will be distributed by the Ministry. A hundred more will be delivered five days later. After that the students will review the situation to see whether more boats are needed.
