Coincidental boat sinking
From BearWiki
Confirmed: The entire scene with the boat in Alaska screams set-up.
In one of the most common complaints about the series, many people have complained that the Alaskan boat scene[1][2] seems fake from start to finish.[3][4][5][6]. Bear coincidentally stumbles into an abandoned boat and decides to "borrow" it. The grass beneath the "abandoned" boat, while it lays flat, is largely still green, (Picture Requested) , which shouldn't be the case for a boat there for a long time. Bear rows the river out across a great distance without any evidence of sinking. However, suddenly, the boat starts taking on water so quickly that there is no choice but to abandon the boat and swim through glacial water to shore. Yet, the boat sinks incredibly leisurely, hovering even when underwater when it should have no buoyancy, until Bear has all of his gear ready. Then it's down in a heartbeat, and bear is in the water -- but with the cameramen already in place in the water, filming the whole thing. Then Bear, still dexterous despite the freezing water, "cures" his hypothermia with a couple pushups.
The kinetic energy of a collision is related to how much the boat weighs and how fast it moves relative to the ice. Remember physics: e=1/2mv^2. A 50 tonne fishing vessel going at 30 mph (13.4 m/s) has a kinetic energy of 4.5 MJ. 150kg worth of boat/crew moving at 5 mph (2.2 m/s) has a kinetic energy of 363J -- about 1/12,000th of the energy. (and Bear looked to be going less than 5 mph through the ice). These little dinghies have hulls about 2mm thick aluminum hull, while a big fishing boat may have a 6mm thick steel hull (perhaps the equivalent of a 14mm thick aluminum hull). You're looking at 7 times the effective durability on the big boat, but something like 12,000 times the kinetic energy. Even if you slow the fishing boat down to a crawl and reinforce its hull, it's still no comparison.
A small boat moving at the sort of paddling speeds you can achieve with a shovel is essentially immune to any sort of relevant ice damage
Update: The edited version of this episode makes it more clear that this was a set-up scene.
[edit] Analysis
Neutral: There is at least a chase boat in this scene, because Bear's paddling is filmed from the side on at least one occasion.
Support: The boat being damaged that severely is unrealistic, given its light weight and only human power driving it forward. Large ships are damaged by ice because of their great mass and kinetic energy, not because of some fundamental metal-cutting property of ice. Try it out yourself: take anything that has an aluminum skin about the thickness of a boat, and try to cut it with ice using human power alone. You'll fail.
Support: Did the cameramen hike in those wetsuits all the way for the fun of it?
Support: Given that the boat appears to be sinking from the rear, are we to believe that the damage is on the rear end (not the front end, which is out of the water)? Has Bear been paddling this boat around backwards off-camera?
- Oppose: True, False, Yes, What? The crew evidently needed their own boat, therefore had to use GPS to retrieve a boat; changed into waterproof, insulated dry suits and followed Bear. The boat is made out of wood, not metal, it's old and damaged, that's why it sinks. (Answer given above). The boat sinks from the rear because as the boat begins to sink, the cameramen come on board the boat, obviously weighing it down in the rear. This is obviously part of the filming procedure. Once bouyancy hope is forfeitted, Bear agrees to swim in a direction, the film crew follows in a dramatized fashion.
- Support: If the damage was on the front, it won't sink from there when the front is abovewater. For it to take on water (apart from waves, which are not a problem in this ep), the damage has to be below the water. Also, since when do boats just hover underwater and wait for you to decide that you're all ready to be submerged? Wood or not, it's still perfectly buoyant, as is obvious in the video. Lastly, where do you see any evidence that the boat is "damaged"? They give you some great closeup shots of the boat when Bear first "discovers" it -- pretty much from all angles -- and there's not a whit of damage on it. Even if it was wood, what difference would that make? Wood is not going to go from "perfect" to "sinking" because a person paddles it into an iceberg. These things get dragged across gravel and the like every time people take them out of the water in some places.
