7
Degrees of Freedom
from Port Hardy to Puget
Sound
via pedal, paddle, solar, & sail
Notes on the Microship/Flotilla
Expedition
Steven K. Roberts
Nomadic Research
Labs
Revised: Sept 30, 2006
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June 2008 UPDATE: Things have changed considerably... I'm leaving the text below for context, but I have a new boat
and some considerably revised plans to match. The flotilla
concept has grown into something much larger and this is about to be
completely rewritten.
If
you’re ready for some time on water and
want to do something
unforgettable in the Pacific Northwest, this may be for
you! We are putting together an unhurried expedition from
Port
Hardy (at the north end of Vancouver Island) to Camano Island (in Puget
Sound)... and the target date is now undefined.
Between now and then, we are doing frequent day trips and a
few short
camping runs via kayak to
fine-tune the systems as well as traveling relationships with local
flotillians...
I am envisioning a flotilla of small craft, with a slow
turnover of
individuals as schedules, skills, and interests dictate. My own boatlet
is a rather intensely engineered pedal/solar/sail micro-trimaran, but
the nature of schedule-free travel is that just about anything will
work
as long as we don’t insist on moving at precisely the same
pace. My
bias, as I’m sure you can tell, is toward small human,
electric, and
sail-powered boats... but if you have
a (quiet) powerboat and want to join us, you can carry lots of
food, drink, spares, and comfort items! Motherships might be
welcome
in the wilderness... one thing I’ve had to admit over the
years is that
I’m not as much of a purist as I once thought.
Microship Wordplay
coming in for a landing on
Camano Island
The seed of this expedition is the Microship shown above, a
homebrew
amphibian
pedal/solar/sail micro-trimaran, along with an Aire
inflatable kayak with
camping
gear
to simplify access to shore and accommodate local jaunts (it is a bit on the geeky side...)
If you want to keep track of the project, I post updates and
photos on the Microship
Blog as well as the Live
Page.
More information on this project is linked from the Technomadic Flotilla home
page. There is
also some technical material about the Microship substrate, as well as a bit of my
personal technomadic history and a general profile page
with
some more good boat photos.
The rest of this document is a discussion of the general expedition
plan. I welcome input from folks with local knowledge or other ideas;
nothing about this is cast in stone.
Overall Plan
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To begin the
journey, we'll
convoy to Port Hardy at
the north end of Vancouver
Island
(a little over 300 miles from Victoria), do our final staging, then
head
south... with plenty of time spent enroute exploring countless little
ports and islands, the Broughtons, Desolation Sound, Princess
Louisa Inlet, and other highlights of this amazing
area.
We'll
return
through the Gulf Islands and San Juans, then head for our home port on
Camano Island (where I have unlimited space for camping and partying,
making this a
good place to stop and celebrate the completion of the adventure while
dealing with closing logistics).
This should be an interesting cultural
experience: a
roving community of aquatic adventurers, joining and leaving the
group as dictated by interests and available time. If the
idea
intrigues you, please holler and after
a bit of preliminary discussion I'll add you to the planning group.
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Flotilla Equipment Requirements
There are a
lot of good
resources on the Net and in print concerning
provisioning and preparedness for wilderness adventure. People have
done this coast in kayaks (one excellent book
is
Homelands:
Kayaking the Inside Passage) and all manner of
sailing craft,
though the average cruiser north of Desolation Sound is piloting a
diesel-powered trawler or a sailboat capable of world voyaging. With
our
limited stowage space, dependence on human power instead of petroleum,
and general frailty in the face of Big Water, we will have to use
cleverness and conservative planning where others just crank up the
throttle and plunge ahead. We will continually re-assess our
capabilities and the conditions ahead, always
remembering that the most important goal is to be out there doing this
in the
first place... not reaching a specific waypoint.
And we'll be facing all sorts of challenges: bears, big winds, numerous
rapids, fluky currents,
hypothermia, fast cruise ships in narrow channels, commercial barges,
whales, scarce dock space, storms, fog, williwaws, challenging
anchorages, and infrequent opportunities to provision.
I mention all this to make it clear that even though this is mostly in
protected waters, it is well beyond the daysail level. I’m
not on a
schedule, and am open to participation by a wide variety of boats (I
don’t expect to be either the fastest or the slowest of the
fleet). But
one essential requirement is seaworthiness, and enough experience to be
more or less on your own in remote areas for an extended period of time.
Wordplay
at Eagle Harbor, Bainbridge
Island
All participants thus need to be self-sufficient in terms
of
camping
and food preparation, for although we’ll prefer to cook as a
group it’s
inevitable that we’ll get separated occasionally. You need to
feel
comfortable surviving with what you have on board, and I consider the
ability to drop anchor and spend the night on the water to be essential
(even if, in boats of this scale, it’s a bit on the spartan
side). REI is a great place to shop for all this... and the
banner below will take you to their "Outlet" store where there are lots
of discounts and clearance items (this is an affiliate link... I get a
few percent if you buy something):
Basic communication and navigation tools are also essential: at a bare
minimum, all boats in the flotilla must have marine VHF and hand-held
GPS (along with the charts to make the GPS useful). No exceptions.
People die out there, and I don’t want to have the expedition
ruined by
one of my friends disappearing into the fog, lost and out of touch,
only
to get run over by a freighter. There are a lot of learning curves
associated with all this, and it is completely reasonable to say,
“OK,
I’ve gone far enough! See you guys...” and head for
the nearest port.
Everyone must be
responsible for their own safety, and sensible enough to not push the
limits and become a liability to the group. (All obvious legal
disclaimers apply!)
Speaking of safety, it goes without saying that navigation lights,
PFDs, horns, flares, and other Coast Guard mandated essentials must be
on board every boat. If we’re lucky, one or more of the boats
in our
fleet will be robust enough to act as a
“mothership,” able to keep
track
of everyone’s location (more on that in a moment), and ready
to do a
rescue or take someone in tow if necessary. We might even be able to
augment our spares and tools inventory with a mothership, but
let’s not
count on it.
At the beginning of this document, I mentioned backup systems... the
ability to fall back on at least one alternative method of propulsion
when the primary fails. In my case, I can use any combination of
pedaling (3 knots sustained, or 4 knots when highly motivated), solar
power (theoretically 5.5 knots but I’ve only seen 3.5 on the
thruster
so
far), and sail (depends on conditions, of course, but I’ve
had it to
about 8.5). I also carry a half kayak paddle with a T-handle; it would
be terribly uncomfortable to use, but one can get highly energized when
in mortal danger. I believe that all boats in the fleet MUST be able to
fall back on something else when the winds (or the arms) fail.
Finally, a word about the high-tech stuff. As you probably know, this
has been the theme of the Microship project since its inception,
arguably the reason it has taken so damn long to get to the point where
I can actually consider an expedition. I’ve scaled back on a
lot of the
geekier objectives, finally becoming more interested in getting on with
it than spending my life in the lab.
Still, there are a few things that will be of particular use to us as a
group. Most notable, perhaps, is the tracking system... I’d
really like
to have an APRS tracker on every boat (which requires a basic tech
no-code ham license, something which gives you other benefits as well).
If we pull this off, it translates into a chart display with the
current
location of every boat overlaid on it, a graphic that can not only save
somebody’s butt when things get difficult, but one that can
in turn be
replicated on the Web. This should provide your friends and family back
home with endless delight and reassurance. If that's too much to deal
with between now and then, just stay near me... I have on one my
boat.
I’m looking for folks to help with
some packaging and software projects, and there’s no more
motivated
volunteer than one who intends to play with the finished product. So if
all this is giving you itchy feet and making you want to curl up with a
chartbook for some proper daydreaming, get in touch soon.
There’s
plenty
to do. All Microship designs are free for your use if you
want to
come along, and there is a sort of skunkworks
feeling to a project of this scale...
I’ll gradually flesh out this section of the site as planning
progresses. Please contact
me if you have any questions, or you want to be added to the
flotilla discussion mailing list.
--Steve
Microship
Songline
at
sunset, off
Whidbey Island