(London, England)
Would the Boat Self-Right
Testing the Boat and Meeting other Ocean Rowers
| Overall Length: | 27 feet |
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| Height: | 4 feet | |
| Boat Weight: | 1100 lb. | |
| Weight Loaded: | 2200 lb. | |
| Designer: | Nic Bailey (London, England) |
During the three months that I waited for Nic Bailey to finish the plans for the rowboat and send them to me, I tried to get ahead of the game by studying the elements of boat building. My manual was The Gougeon Brothers on Boat Construction. I was about to embark on a project, the likes of which I knew nothing about. I had no experience whatsoever in reading plans, boat construction, fiberglassing, or for that matter any experience in electrical wiring, electrical systems, navigation, solar panels, VHR radios, 12 volt batteries, converters, regulators, marine single-side band radios, GPS units, desalinater pumps, radio licenses, EPIRB systems, maps and compasses, ocean charts, shipping containers, container ships, freight forwarders, custom brokers, etc. Green and inexperienced hardly begins to convey my level of expertise as I began the task of constructing a vessel that I hoped would carry me across the ocean. However, I had faith, I believed in prayer, I had a dream, a vision, a goal; I believed in myself, and I believed I could learn the things I needed to know to make the project come to pass. So I began.
From the Gougeon Brothers' book on boat construction, I learned that the intricate curves of the hull are usually laid out on the floor using a table of offset numbers, that had to be meticulously calculated. This is called lofting, and it looked extremely complicated. When I received the set of drawings from Nic, I looked all through the plans for the chart of numbers. Not finding them, I faxed Nic and asked where they were. His reply, "lofting, that's the old fashion way of designing a boat. Now days, we use computer software (Cad Software) to draw the plans." "Take the drawings to a photocopy shop, enlarge them 100%, then place the drawings on plywood and cut out the 17 stations that will form the basic shape of the boat." I was terribly relieved to learn that I was not going to have to learn lofting.
| The "Brother of Jared" was constructed in the follow manner: Click on the photos to enlarge them. |
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A wooden ladder frame was built and placed on the floor, with the rungs of the ladder evenly spaced every two feet. |
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Seventeen stations were cut out of plywood and set in place on the rungs of the ladder by means of a frame set. These framesets had to be absolutely level both vertically and horizontally. |
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The seventeen stations were then connected to each other using 1" x 2" x 10' strips of wood. With the wood in place, I now had the basic outline of the boat. It looked a lot like the balsa wood fuselage of a model airplane. |
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Over this wooden frame, I laid strips of rigid foam. The foam came in sheets 4' x 9', much like a sheet of plywood. If you tried to bend it, the foam would break. To soften the foam, for molding purposes, I cut the sheets into 18" strips which were then heated over an electric floor heater. When soft, the foam was pliable, and could be molded. I would place the heated strips on the wooden mold, and hold them in place while they cooled. To keep the strips from falling off the frame, I tacked them in place with green roofing nails. As the boat was being built upside down, I did the bottom half first. |
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Gaps in the foam strips, and other irregularities were filled in using epoxy putty. Epoxy resin, which has the consistency of thick honey can be stiffened up by adding special powders to the mix, thus making the viscosity more like peanut butter. (All this I learned from the Gougeon Brothers.) After setting up, the putty can then be filed or sanded, for a smooth finish. |
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With the hull of the vessel covered in gray foam, it was time to apply the fiberglass cloth and resin. At first, I started buying the resin and hardener in one gallon quantities, then five gallon containers. All told, I went through several hundred gallons of resin and hardener. I would have been much better off buying the resin in bulk, in 50 gallon barrels. But that's all in hindsight. The bottom of the craft was covered with two layers of cloth, and for added strength, the keel area and the sides of the boat received three and sometimes four layers, although the plans only called for two. |
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To work on the inside of the boat, I took a saber saw and cut off the top and bottom portions of the boat, thus separating them from the hull. I actually cut through the wooden stations, and then with the two halves lying on the floor, I knocked the wooden frames out of the three pieces of the boat, as I no longer needed them. With the wood gone, I was able to fiberglass the inside of the vessel, as well as install the storage compartments that would hold my food and other supplies during the voyage. The storage compartments were constructed of 1/4" marine plywood, then bonded in place. |
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With the tops removed, I was able to do all the inside work. This photo shows the front dagger board as well as the large forward storage compartment. It's important that the fiberglass case holding the wooden dagger board is sealed tight where it passes through the bottom of the boat This is a potential area for leaks, as Andrew Halsey found out on his Atlantic crossing. |
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With the insides fiberglassed, and the storage compartments bonded in place, I placed the top portions of the vessel on the bottom half, and seam taped everything together. |  |
Now it was time to install the bulkheads. Again the plans called for two layers of cloths on the inside and outside to hold the 1" marine plywood bulkheads in place. However, at the suggestion of Peter Hogg, I reinforced this area with five layers on both the inside and outside. In late June of 1996, a memorial service was held for Peter Bird at a marina in Tiburon, CA. I drove from Salt Lake City to Tiburon to be a part of the memorial. There were several hundred people in attendance at the yacht club to pay their respects to Peter. It was here that I met Kenneth Crutchlow, Tony Bird - Peter's brother and Peter Hogg who had kept the world informed of the tragic events surrounding the mishap of Peter's boat. I informed Peter Hogg that I was building a boat just like Bird's boat. Because of what happened to Bird's boat, Peter highly recommended that I reinforce the seam between the bulkhead and the top of the boat, which I did. |
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The deck flooring was the next item to be installed, but before it could be bonded in place, fresh water storage tanks had to be built and placed underneath the deck. I looked in the yellow pages, and found a man that made water tanks for RV units. He came to my workshop, took the necessary measurements, and fabricated three, heavy duty plastic water tanks for the vessel. Total capacity of the tanks is about 65 gallons. On the voyage, the tanks will be kept full at all times. That's a lot of weight to have to move, but the water is also my boat ballast. It will help keep the boat stable, and help prevent capsizing. |
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With the tanks in place, the deck was placed on top on them and bonded in place. Storage compartments were then put in place on either side of the deck. |
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The basic form and structure of the boat was now complete. The next step would be to paint the boat, but before that happened, the boat had to faired. Fairing means to make the lines of the craft smooth and pleasing to the eye. High spots had to be removed and low spots filled in. For this process, I used the resin putty, the stuff that looked liked peanut butter. I would trowel it on using a wide, wall paper hanging blade. After drying, I would either sand it by hand or use a power sander. A four foot, metal level was used to check the fairness of my work. This process went on for 6-8 months, as I relentlessly strove to achieve graceful looking lines. At last the day came when I said "enough is enough, it's time to paint." |
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Several undercoats of epoxy primer were applied, followed by numerous coats of yellow epoxy paint. |
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This is the completed deck area. My feet are placed in the foot straps; I can read the compass which sits on the deck between my legs, as well as my position from the monitor screen of the Magellan GPS unit. The pumps are for pulling fresh water out of the storage tanks under the deck. |
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The forward compartment showing the placement of the PUR 12volt water pump (desalinater). The blue, plastic canister is a pre-filter for the pump. In front of the pump is the large storage compartment. The copper foil is the ground for the single side-band radio. |
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This picture shows the boat in its completed form. It made a trial run in the Atlantic off the coast of Portugal in September of 1998. I added the white, aluminum support bars as an afterthought. They proved to be very helpful in moving about the boat, especially during times of rough weather. |
The solar panels were the first items to go on. I bolted them to the top of the boat, three in the front and three in the back. United Solar of San Diego CA sponsored me five panels, for which I was very grateful. I bought two other panels from the Solar Power Company here in Salt Lake. At this Salt Lake company, I met a kindly gentleman by the name of Frank Naylor. As I had no concept, not even the vaguest notion of how to tie all these components together, to make them work, Frank took the time to diagram, on a sheet of paper how it all went together. He drew little boxes for the electrical components, and bigger boxes for the solar panels and batteries. Then he drew other boxes for the fuse box, regulator, shut off switch and amp meter. Between all of these boxes he drew lines indicating where the positive (red) wires went, and the (black) negative wires went. He even specified the size of wire needed and where additional fuses should be placed. When I walked out of his office, with my sheet of instructions in hand, I had hope in my heart.
Before I dared install the Trimble email unit, the Magellan GPS system, the Icom single-side band radio or the PUR desalinater pump in the boat, I needed the assurance that they would work and that I knew how to operate them. Accordingly, I set the Magellan GPS unit and the Trimble email system up in my office with long antenna wires running out my window to the roof where I had taped the antennas to vent pipes. These antennas were sending and receiving signals from the satellites overhead. Same with the marine radio, although I never really got it to work as it needed to be grounded in salt water. After much effort from the tech support person at Trimble in California, Roger Roy, I was able to get the email system to work. I could compose a message on my laptop computer and send it through the Trimble transceiver, which would relay it to the satellite sitting some 22,000 miles above South America. From there the message went to Perth, Australia, then back to New Foundland, Canada, to Stratos who is my email service provider, and then to my office here in Salt Lake City. It took about two minutes for the message to make the round trip and appear on my office computer. It worked, and it has never stopped working. The Magellan GPS unit was able to read its satellites, and the PUR desalinater pumped water. With these tests confirmed, I was ready to install the units in the boat.
For two weeks I lay inside the boat making the installations, always with Frank's diagram in one hand. There were numerous trips to Home Depot, Eagle and Auto Zone looking for just the right size of wire, connectors, or tools. There are hundreds of feet of wire inside the boat, and it all had to be run as a single bundle through the inside storage compartments. As I would install an electrical unit, I would first connect it to the 12-volt battery to insure that there was power; if I had to splice in additional wire, I would again test it with the battery. That way, I knew that when all the wires got to the fuse box, everything to that point was working. All positive and negative wires went into the fuse box, and only the appropriate red and black wires came out, which were attached to the regulator, amp meter and master shut off switch.
Finally, finally, after two long weeks of lying cramped inside of the boat, it came time to see if it all worked. I connected the main positive wire to the battery, flipped on the interior light switch, and nothing. I flipped on other switches and still nothing. Frustration, disappointment, anger, fear, I was feeling all of these emotions. It's 9:00 at night, I'm dead tired, and not a happy camper. Everything had worked up to this point, why not now. I took Franks' diagram, and began to trace through the wiring. But my efforts were more akin to opening up the hood of the car and looking inside to see what the problem might be. I was stumped.
It was time for prayer. I'm a firm believer in prayer. I've had a lot of experience with it, and a lot of success in having requests met. I've found that it's most effective after I've done everything that I can do to remedy a situation. And this was certainly a case where I'd done everything I could do to make the electrical system work. So I said a simple prayer. "Father, I've got a problem, system doesn't work. I've done everything I can do to solve it, and I've come up empty handed. Please give me the inspiration I need to know how to resolve the problem. Amen." I then leaned back against the interior wall of the sleeping compartment and waited. I knew an answer would come, I just didn't know what form it would take. I waited about five minutes, and then I had the answer. A wire that needed to be lengthened had been disconnected from the master shut-off switch. I cut a new wire, put on the necessary connections and reinstalled it. And yes, the whole system lit up like a Christmas tree, and it hasn't quit working since. I took Frank's diagram, had it laminated, and placed inside the boat next to the fuse box. It's my golden map that tells me how everything is put together, and where to start looking if I have to troubleshoot.
One hundred and twenty five miles north of Salt Lake City, on the border between Utah and Idaho sits beautiful Bear Lake. I have property on the lake, so it was a natural place to try out the self-righting aspect of the boat. It took six large fellows to be able to rock the boat back and forth until it picked up enough momentum to flip over.
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| River guides flipping the boat over at Bear Lake. I'm inside the back compartment. |
I came back to the lake twice more over the course of the summer, each time with additional weight in the boat. I filled zip-lock bags with sand and placed them inside the storage compartments to simulate actual cargo weight. On neither occasion did the boat self-right, but I found that with the extra weight in the boat, it became easier to right the vessel through continued rocking. I've been upside down in the boat sufficient number of times now and have had success each time in bringing the boat back over that I'm comfortable with the self-righting aspect of the craft even though it hasn't worked as anticipated. It may work a lot better in an actual capsize, although I really hope I don't have to find out. A capsize will be my worst nightmare.
Fortunately for me, at this time in the spring of 1998, there were three fellows with extensive experience in ocean rowing living in the California area. Mick Bird (No relation to Peter Bird who died in June of 1996 while attempting a Pacific crossing.) was living in Malibu, with his wife Stacia and their twin daughters. Mick's goal is to be the first person to circumnavigate the globe in a rowboat. He had just completed a shakedown voyage to Hawaii. (At the time of this writing, Mick has made it all the way to Australia. In April of 2000, he will try to row across the Indian Ocean to the east coast of Africa.)
Steve Smith and Jason Lewis, two Brits living in San Francisco had made a successful crossing of the Atlantic in their peddle boat. Their goal is to circumnavigate the globe by peddle power. They rode their bikes across Europe to Portugal, then peddled their boat across the Atlantic to Miami, FL. Arriving in the USA, Jason biked across the US to California, while Steve used inline skates to travel the same distance. Steve was hit by a car in Colorado, and suffered severe leg and ankle injuries. It took him a year to make it to California. From San Francisco, these two continued on to Hawaii, where Jason decided he didn't want to continue with the project any more and dropped out. Steve continued on alone and has made it as far as the Island of Tarara, where the boat is currently in storage. In April of 2000, he'll continue on to Australia and then follow Mick Bird across the Indian Ocean to Africa.
Via Mick's web site, I had followed his adventure day by day. When he returned home to Malibu, I contacted him and asked if could come out to visit him, as I had innumerable questions that I needed answers to.
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| The Brother of Jared at Oxnard CA for a seawater test on the desalinater. Mick Bird came over from his home in Malibu to visit. |
When a person has never done something of this nature, the questions are never ending. I also went to visit Steve Smith in San Francisco who gave me a lot of insight into navigation. He gave me the Atlantic chart he and Jason had used to plot their daily position from Portugal to Miami. Several months later when I brought my boat to California to do a test run down the coast from the San Francisco Bay to Monterey, I met Jason Lewis who was living in his VW bus behind the warehouse/shop of the Persidio Marina, just under the Golden Gate Bridge on the Sausalito side. He was refurbishing the peddle boat after it had been trashed in a capsize while sitting in the harbor at Monterey. Jason too, like Steve gave valuable insight into the logistics of ocean travel. And I was like a sponge soaking up every piece of information I could.
During the summer of 1998, with the help of friends, I took the boat to California with anticipation of doing a shake down cruise off the coast from San Francisco Bay to Monterey, a distance of about 100 miles. I first rowed in the Alameda Channel. I was concerned about tides and the strength of currents, my only experience with currents being those of the Green and Colorado Rivers, but the boat handled well and I could move it along against a mild incoming tide. Leaving the boat tied up at the public boat dock in Alameda, my friends and I drove down to Monterey to check out things there. When we arrived, the weather was a bit foul and on checking with local harbor master, he informed me that there was a current running up the coast, as opposed to coming down the coast as I had anticipated using. I decided it was wise not to venture out into the ocean at this time, so I canceled the trip. Going back to Alameda, I decided to take the boat over to the Persidio Marina and place the boat in the waters there. I wanted to play at the edge of the currents going in and out of the bay underneath the bridge.
I was able to get into the water about 1:00 PM as the tide was coming in. I rowed out towards the bridge, just to get the feel of ocean swells. (I'd never been on the ocean before, this was a whole new experience for me.) As I was rowing along, a fellow in a rowing shell approached me. He could skim across the water like a water skeeter. We exchanged pleasantries, and then he invited me to join a barbecue at the Sausalito Marina. As the tide was going in, I said ok and started inland. The tide was moving at about six miles an hour. It was like a fast moving river. In no time I was at the marina, but I never found the outdoor barbecue. I had to move out of the channel and into the dock area so I could find a place to tie up to while I waited for the tide to change at 3:00 PM.
With a change in the tide, I started back towards the Persidio Marina, maybe three miles away. I was doing OK until the afternoon northwest wind came up. I needed to stay relatively close to the north cliffs so I could make the turn and enter the marina, however, the wind began pushing me further out into the main channel where the current was threatening to take me out under the bridge and out to sea. Slight predicament here. I was unable to row into the wind towards the cliffs, so I let the current take me past the cliffs after which I made a pull towards the stone breakwater of the marina. I made it, but I made it too good and my boat ended up on the rocks of the breakwater. Fortunately my two daughters Susan and Allison were there and as they pulled on ropes to haul the boat towards the entrance of the harbor, I walked beside the boat and tried to keep it off the rocks. We finally made it to the entrance, but the bottom of the boat sustained substantial cuts and bruises to its fiberglass surface. The next day we hauled it home to the shop where I did needed repairs to the fiberglass bottom. It was a good experience, and I learned a lot
While mentioning help received from other ocean rowers, it's important to remember the names of two other gentlemen who have given considerable advise and counsel to me, but who I have yet to meet - Stein Hoff and Arvid Bentsen of Norway. These two men participated in the 1997 race from the Canary Islands to Barbados. After their return, I contacted them by email and made numerous inquiries about oars, ocean charts, food preparation, etc. They were always willing to take of their time to answer my questions.
Tori Murden, who successfully completed a row from the Canary Islands to the island of Guadeloupe (the Leeward Islands east of the Dominican Republic) has also been very helpful with advise, suggestions and council.
I am deeply indebted to these courageous people, who have blazed the trail ahead of me, and who now have been willing to reach back and extend a hand of fellowship and encouragement to me as I embark on a similar experience, one they have safely tucked under their belts, and which now resides only in their memories.
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