5000 pound open boat, 3' Freeboard, sitting in fresh water. 1/4" hole in the bottom. How long till it sinks?

Question

No rain -- water only comes through the 1/4" hole

Answer 1

If the water is less than 3' it will not sink.

Answer 2

When it reaches the top of the gunnel's> plug the hole with something>Put a pump in it>That's not a nautical way to think><Sinks>

Answer 3

about 4 hours

but why you want to sink it

Answer 4

I'm not sure. The boat will sink long before the water gets to the gun whale as stated above. I'm not sure how much pressure the water would come in the 1/4  inch hole at. It depends on the draft. The volume of water would be roughly the volume of the hull to about the waterline or so I think. At that point the density of the hull will start to equal that of the water.  It depends on the shape of the hull. 5,000 lbs. equals about 80 cubic feet of fresh water and about 78 cubic feet in salt water. A cubic foot is about 7 3/4 gallons of water roughly. I know it looks like a 5 gallon bucket would hold a cubic foot but it doesn't. So roughly 620 gallons of fresh water would sink the boat. Now all you have to figure out is how fast is the water coming in. That is a tough calculation to make because it isn't going to be a constant rate. It also depends on the shape of the hull. The reason is because the closer to the water line the bottom is, in other words a shallow draft boat, the lower the pressure will be. the deeper in the water the bottom is the more the pressure will be. The higher the pressure the higher the volume. Also as the boat gets lower in the water as it sinks the faster the water will come in. I didn't get past basic algebra in high school so the math it would take to figure that out is probably beyond my knowledge.