Ships – Boats – boat component – or attachment – Sectional
Patent
1996-05-22
1997-07-08
Sotelo, Jesus D.
Ships
Boats, boat component, or attachment
Sectional
296157, 114343, B63B 704
Patent
active
056450109
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
The present invention refers to a device at a box consisting of an upper part and a lower part of a load box, which by said parts can be coupled together to each other to form a storage box and that the box is also provided to be used as a boat.
Today, different variants of boxes intended to be mounted on vehicle roofs are frequently used. The most common field of application for these is presumably transportation of skis etc. during the winter season, but the roof box can of course be used the remaining part of the year (even if this mostly is not the case) as a complement to the luggage compartment of the car. However, one may generally find the roof box kept in garages etc. during the major part of the year which not only means that the box in itself is not used but also that it occupies a large storage area, which area not too seldom constitutes an item of shortage in garages and storage rooms. Efforts to increase the degree of use of the roof boxes have been made by letting them obtain more fields of application than to merely function as a simple storage box. This has among other things resulted in boxes which in more or less successful designs can be utilized as for example in pulkas or stretchers.
A large roof box, of for example the dimensions 2,20.times.1,15.times.0,30 m, in an upside downwards position confusingly resembles the body of a small boat. A roof box designed such that it also should be able to be used safely as a boat implies an excellent complementary use of the roof box. A convertible roof box/boat at the same time entails extra use of the roof box also during the ice free months of the year and is advantageously used for example at lake fishing. During the winter season a "roof box boat" may constitute a light handy rescue platform for ice fishers, skaters etc., when they are not certain of the buoyancy of the ice or need a sleigh by which equipment and possible fish may be transported.
EP,A1 239 212, U.S. Pat. No. 4,718,587 and DE,A2, 2 048 262 show coupling together of box parts laterally and respectively using only the upper part of a load box as a boat.
Roof box boats according to known designs however exhibit several shortcomings. Present roof box boats only utilize the upper part of the roof box, which normally entails that these obtain a too low freeboard height to provide safe buoyancy and stability. Further the roof boxes become high if they are manufactured according to conventional designs to be able to function as a boat with high freeboard. When such boxes are transported on a vehicle roof they entail an unnecessary great air drag with increased fuel consumption of the vehicle in question as a result. Since roof boxes generally are made of plastic, e.g. glass fibre (GRP), polycarbonate or ABS-plastic reinforcements are required for the body of the boat, which according to a known design is constituted by one part of the box, to prevent that the passengers trample through the same. Further, at crack formation, there is a risk that the vessel sinks, unless it is provided with a double bottom, alternatively float tanks filled either with air or with a float material, e.g of type cellular plastic, which has closed cells. It is also common that the thwarts (seat boards) of the roof box boat are not fixedly anchored in the walls of the roof box but instead detachably mountable in the roof box. This immediately gives the user a problem with loose parts that take up space and may rattle in the roof box when this is utilized as a storage box.
The present invention intends to remedy said problem and thereby also to make the roof box boat safer and more user-friendly.
This purpose is achieved by means of a device according to the present invention which in the main is characterized therein, that said box parts are, with one of the box parts receivable on top of the other box part, able to couple to each other in order to form a boat or a similar vessel by the lower part of the load box, in a coupled together position with the upper part of the load box, being provided to function
REFERENCES:
patent: 3539219 (1970-11-01), Mueller
patent: 4718587 (1988-01-01), Roberts
patent: 5283702 (1994-02-01), Matheson
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