Rowing Cruiser

I have always been fascinated with human powered craft of all kinds. Several years ago I became obsessed with the idea of using pedal-power to drive a boat and dove into research and design of a pedal driven propeller drive. About that time Hobie introduced the Mirage Drive for their Adventure kayaks. I abandoned the propeller scheme and set about figuring a way to mount the Mirage Drive, which is designed for a sit-on-top kayak, in my Mill Creek kayak/trimaran. The result was something like a daggerboard trunk that was wide enough to drop the Mirage into. I have used it on quite a few outings and have been delighted with the results.

My Mill Creek 16.5 Kayak Trimaran

Mirage Drive Mounted in the Mill Creek

Lately I find myself thinking more and more about rowing, especially as I'm reading Colin Angus' book Beyond the Horizon and following the development of his and his wife Julie's expedition rowboats. I work out on a Water Rower on the mornings that I don't commute on my bike. It's great exercise. I enjoy rowing on the water too, although I feel like I have a lot to learn about it. I'm not certain, but it seems like I can generate more power rowing than pedaling. The problem is that I have never been entirely comfortable moving forward while facing backward.

One of the things I have found most frustrating in my love affair with small sailboats has been my dependence on the fickle winds of the desert and mountain lakes where I sail. I watch beautiful breezy days come and go and then when I finally get out on the water only to be disappointed by dead air. I have used outboard motors but I consider the noise, exhaust and gasoline fumes antithetical to an otherwise serene experience. And I don't really trust outboards. They're like the prospector's mule in the old westerns, they always seem to falter just when you need them most. Maybe it's time to consider shifting the energy source from wind and gasoline and back to muscle power.

I recently encountered three boats on the internet that have really fueled my imagination. They are all streamlined human powered cruising craft with small sleeping compartments. Two of them, Colin Angus' Rowing Yacht and Wayland Marine's Merry Expedition are sliding seat rowboats. The other is Paul Gartside's pedal-powered Blue Skies, a pedal/propeller craft which has also been adapted for the Mirage Drive. There are several things that I find exciting about these boats. First is that they are muscle powered. Second is that they are designed for extreme conditions, unsinkable and generally self-bailing, at least in the case of the two rowboats. Third is that they provide an ideal cruising feature - the ability to anchor out or drop a parachute anchor and sleep in a secure weatherproof cabin. All in a lightweight , maneuverable package designed to be handled easily by one man.

Angus Rowboats' Rowing Yacht

Scale model of Wayland Marine's Merry Expedition

Paul Gartside's Blue Skies modified for Mirage Drive pedaling

While studying these three boats I had a sort of epiphany. It would be very easy to add a Mirage Drive trunk to either the Angus or Wayland boat, which would allow for sliding seat rowing for powering across open water and forward-looking pedaling for shoreline exploration. In addition, you could add a small, collapsible sailing rig for running and reaching when the conditions are just right. The more I thought about it the more the concept grew on me. This was obviously a direction that would be worth exploring. But there would be a significant time and money investment before I could be certain whether it was the solution I was looking for? Should I build a simpler boat as a test bed? It would have to accommodate sliding seat rowing, pedaling, sleeping and limited sailing.

The obvious answer was right under my nose, sitting there on my boat trailer: the XCR. Since the amas are out of action for the time being anyway, I could add a sliding seat rig and Mirage trunk to the main hull, which was designed to serve as a stand-alone expedition canoe anyway. I already own a Mirage Drive and a beautiful pair of 9-foot carbon fiber hatchet oars. There's plenty of room to stretch out and sleep and I could easily adapt the tiny balanced lug sailing rig from the inflatable trimaran I designed for the Texas 200. The sail would be quickly collapsible and easily stowable. It would be an accessory, as this would be primarily a rowboat with optional sailing as occasional auxiliary power.

Sailing my inflatable Fugu in Texas

My first concern was whether the XCR hull would be stable enough for sliding seat rowing. I needed to have an answer to that question before I rolled up my sleeves and went to work, which meant I needed to know before the weather turned too cold to risk a capsize. I kludged together a rowing rig from bits and pieces laying around the shop and took it out for a test row on Utah Lake. I was surprised and relieved at how stable the hull felt under oar while sitting on a seat that was about 8 inches above the floor. And it moved fast. I wish I knew how fast, but I forgot to bring along my GPS. I would say the XCR hull is ideal for rowing except that it felt like it would benefit from a skeg. I think next time I will try it with a fixed rudder. Or maybe I will add a small skeg.

This will be an ideal winter project. By spring I will be ready to test the row/pedal/sail/sleep concept in a boat with the general parameters of the boats that I have been ogling online for the past few weeks.

XCR first rowing test on Utah Lake

Cracks!

After the winter of 2009 I noticed that cracks had begun to appear along the edges of the XCR's ama decks. I assumed that it must have been the result of stress from letting the kids ride on the amas at the last Lake Powell Messabout.

I wasn't sure I could access the interiors well enough to repair the cracks, but once I removed the inspection ports I found that I could reach in far enough inside to trace the cracks with my fingers. Since the cracks were limited to the region between the bulkheads, I was able to repair them with fiberglass tape and fillets applied from the inside.

Then, over the winter of 2010 the cracks returned with a vengeance. This time they showed up in various places along all of the ama panel seams, including spots that would only be accessible by completely removing the decks. Over time they continued to get worse until I had ugly gashes running along the decks and chines. I was completely stymied as was Chris who suggested that it might have something to do with expansion and contraction from seasonal hot and cold. I can see how this might cause some cracking but I don't think it explains why the cracks continued to grow. I'm wondering now if it could be some kind of failure of the epoxy.

This looks like a serious repair job made worse by the fact that I don't know what caused the cracks in the first place. Eventually I will repair the amas. But in the meantime I am hatching a new scheme to take the XCR a radical new direction.

A Salty Sojourn, or Terror in the Tufa

I'm almost two years late writing about this trip. I don't know how that happens - it just sometimes does.

It was late Autumn of 2009 and I thought I was finished with sailing for the year but November rolled around with unexpectedly warm weather so I decided to sneak away for a weekend solo cruise on the Great Salt Lake.

Ten years before I had visited tiny Hat Island, about 2o miles across open water nearer the far, uninhabited western side of the lake. It was one of the strangest experiences of my life. I did not camp there, but anchored out somewhere off the northern tip of Stansbury Island. I have longed to return to Hat Island ever since. When I learned that the island is a bird sanctuary I assumed that it may not be wise to try to camp there, but I assumed the quarter-mile long sandbar that extends south of the island should be an acceptable place to pitch a tent for the night.

The loneliest marina on earth

When I arrived at the Antelope Island marina I was amazed to see that the water level had dropped to so low that all of the boats had been taken out. It was a hauntingly lonely site as I launched and set out. Eerie quiet. No wind to speak of, so I cranked up the Honda. I wasn't a half mile out before there was a loud thunk and my temporary motor mount (oops, never got around to the permanent one) split in half. The motor had hopped violently when it hit some unseen underwater obstacle - almost certainly one of the dreaded tufa reefs that wouldn't normally be this near the surface when the water level was higher. The motor was saved by a safety line but I was left with the dilemma of no motor with half a mile behind me and another 19 or so to go. I decided to lash the motor in place and forge ahead.

Kludged motor mount - a wing and a prayer

After an hour or so of jury rigged motoring, tiny Hat Island peeked above the horizon. I remember that place as a bizarre jumble of black basalt, covered with bird skeletons and surmounted at its highest point by a small weather station that looked more than anything like a space probe crashed on some forbidding alien world.

Hat Island looms off the starboard ama

Having never been to Carrington Island, which is just a couple of miles south of Hat, I decided to go there first, take a look around and then head back to the Hat Island sandbar to spend the night.

The XCR beached on lonely Carrington Island

Carrington Island was once an airforce bombing range and its already jagged and foreboding terrain is pockmarked by craters and chunks of shrapnel. I set out to climb to the highest point but after an hour or so I realized I was burning precious daylight and turned around at the second highest peak. From here I had a startling and disappointing view of Hat Island. It was no longer an island. There was a stretch of dry lake bed connecting it to the northern extremity of Carrington Island. So much for my fantasy of sleeping in total isolation surrounded by water.

Bomb shrapnel on Carrington Island

Hat "Island" is the small dark peak at the far side of the flat

Coming into Carrington Island I had been forced to feel my way through unseen tufa reefs which presented nerve jarring obstacles to my poor dangling motor, forcing me to make a wide arc into deeper water. I now followed the same arc back toward Hat Island but as I got closer to the island the tufa became harder and harder to avoid. The last half mile became a maze of reefs that poked up out of the water in turtle back humps and walls. It eventually became shallow enough that I stepped out of the boat and began leading it by the bow line, weaving in and out of pockets of open-ish water.

You can't get there from here

Eventually I found myself standing there, looking at the island only a quarter of a mile or so away and finally accepting that there was just no way I would be able to reach shore. I might be able to carry my camping gear the rest of the way but I could imagine what would happen to the boat if I left it here on these reefs and surf started rolling in.

Stranded amid the tufa

When you're alone in a strange place there is a certain gravity that comes with the lowering of the sun. Things get strange and foreboding. Standing there in the tufa maze I remembered a story that my surveyor brother-in-law Jim had told me. He had been doing survey work on the causeway that bisects the Great Salt Lake. His team had been using a row of railroad boxcars as a landmark. One night a storm had rolled through. The next morning was clear but when they returned and looked for the boxcars they were nowhere in sight. The waves had taken them. These were full sized steel railroad boxcars filled with rock and the dense salt-laden waves of the Great Salt Lake had just swept them away overnight. Imagine what those waves would do to my little dragonfly of a boat. These thoughts and the vanishing sun made my neck hairs stand on end a bit. It is easy to see how trepidation could turn to terror if something did go seriously wrong out here in the weirdness. After some further head scratching and watching the sun creep ever closer to the horizon I finally realized I was out of options to reach the island and decided to pack it in and head back to Carrington for the night. No wind and not enough water for the motor. I was able walk the boat back out through the maze to open water, gave a shove and hopped aboard. I reached for the paddle but couldn't find it. Now what? I finally spotted the paddle floating about a hundred feet away. I'm trying to remember how I recovered it but to be honest I don't have the slightest idea. One way or another I did recover it and began the trek back to Carrington Island. The light was quickly growing magical and the western slope of Antelope Island off to the east seemed mystical and unreal. The sun set with a deeper crimson than I remember ever seeing. Red sky at night.

Antelope Island in the last gleam of the gloaming

Hellfire and primordial soup

I spent a surprisingly warm night on Carrington Island. This was November in Utah, after all. I started packing up just before dawn. A fresh wind began to blow. Soon the wind was strong and the sails were whipping on the beached XCR. Strange how it came up so fast out of nowhere. I thought about the boxcars again. The water was still flat but covered with a fury of tiny ripples. I tied in a deep reef before I cast off. Once on the water the waves began to build. I was double reefed and doing 8.5 mph by the GPS, but very comfortable. The sun rose on another beautiful day, even more so than yesterday because this sunrise brought the wind with it.

Wind begins to whip the sails

The sudden wind manifests itself in fierce ripples

The ride home was the best sailing ever and the breeze carried me almost to the marina before it faded and died. Most of the way I was double-reefed and doing 8 plus MPH. Back home I was amazed at how pruned my hands still were after two days in the uber-salty water.

Islands, mountains and dawn chop

The lake is rising again now. I don't know when, but I still plan to spend that magical night on the lone sandy beach of Hat Island.

Osmosis in action