What a great day! I spent 8 hours on Glenmore Reservoir today pedalling WiTHiN-24 human powered boat around the lake. It was a perfect day – very little wind, a clear sunny sky and a high of 26 degrees. I got fried, but I was loving every minute of it.

Good news though – I think I may have resolved the numb foot issue by increasing my seat back angle. I lowered the seat back and opened up my hip angle. This puts less pressure on my butt by transferring more load to my upper back. It seemed to have solved the problem which is great, but I have introduced new muscles that have not been training for this particular geometry. When ever you open up the hip angle, you introduce more hamstrings, so they were pretty sore at the end of the day. Also my knees were a bit tender do to this new position. I really hope that the 3 weeks I have remaining to train for my attempt at the 24 hour human powered boat record is enough time for my body to adjust. This is NOT ideal, as I would prefer 3 months to train rather than 3 weeks, but it’s the only time that works into my summer schedule, so I’ll have to just suck it up and go for it.

I have created an information page for the 24 hour record attempt on June 2, 2007 (yes, only 3 weeks away!):
http://www.adventuresofgreg.com/HPB/24hour.html

And here is a map of the reservoir showing my planned route. It’s an out and back dog leg that is approximately 2.5 km long. My home base and support will be staged at the Glenmore Sailing School dock at the south end of the reservoir. My route goes North and turns around at the Glenmore Trail bridge. There is a location on the bike path near the bridge for an official observer. The current HPVA record is 168 km, so that would be about 33 1/2 laps.

We require 2 observers aside from Rob Hitchcock the HPVA official that I am flying in to act as head official. If you are local to Calgary or willing to fly in from Vancouver or somewhere equally convenient, and would be interested in acting as an official observer, then please contact me.

The new propeller that Rick Willoughby made for me just arrived from Melbourne, Australia by MAIL yesterday. It took less than a week to get here!!! That’s better service than UPS ground from the states. I’m anxious to install it and see if WiTHiN will be any faster. I still think that majority of the slower than expected speed is due to the Nimbus sea kayak hull shape which was designed for stability, not speed. This is perfect for the ocean version of WiTHiN, but not ideal for a record attempt. However, it is probably good enough and the experience and publicity stemming from the 24 hour event is great for me and the ocean crossing expedition.

I am all ready for my weekly long ride tomorrow – but this time, it will be on the lake! 8 hours is the goal and I’m really looking forward to it. A super nice change from the same-old, same-old.

I masked off the deck and spray painted it like i should have in the first place. I was really unhappy with all the brush strokes, so decided to sand the paint down and spray it. It cam out WAY BETTER! Check it out:

And my bro Alan kindly printed out some decals for WiTHiN – again, check it out:

I cut some holes in the rear bulkhead to fit the paddles into so they are stowed and out of the way. I also fit in water bags, my safety rope, a bilge pump, water proof cell phone case and some new shoes/pedals to see if I can resolve this foot numbness issue. The Time pedals are very large and spread out the load to the foot more than my Speedplay pedals do. They worked slightly better during a test ride on the M5 last night. We’ll see how my feet handle 8 hours tomorrow.

Rick and I did some more measuring and it appears that the exact shape of the Hyak hull might be responsible for most of the discrepancy between the estimated speed and the actual speed. The hull is a few inches wider at the keel. Some of the other issues were lack of a spinner which I made (oops forgot to take a picture of it), a tapered trailing edge on the drive leg strut, and a better, more flush fit on the plug. I can fill the plug gap in with silicon, then razor cut a slit for removing. To test tomorrow, I’ll just tape it over.

Wow – did I ever get a lot done over the last few days. Dare I say that I think WiTHiN is just about ready for her maiden voyage?

The first thing that I wanted to do was to fair-in the drive leg gear box. The amount of drag from that square, chunky box behind the prop is probably substantial. However, before permanently enclosing the gear box, I knew I had a bit of work to do on it. First off, I chopped off the large square steel tube that was used to mount the gear box to the drive leg struts. I cut half of it off to a much lower profile. Then to add some strength to the connection, I welded two nuts to the cog housing so that the gear box was now being held in place with 5 bolts from two angles.

Next was to re-build my little 11 tooth cog. The grub screw holding the gear onto the axle needed to be an Allen screw so that I could get access to it with a small, right angle alley key. this would allow me to pull the cog off the axle if I needed to, without having to first remove the entire gear box. So, I decided to build a brand new cog using this 1/2″ collar with a Allen screw set screw built into it that i had picked up from the hardware store the other day. This fit perfectly over the axle, and I had a washer that I welded onto the collar and then welded a new 11 tooth gear onto that. Perfectly CENTERED. My old one was a wee bit wobbly because I couldn’t get it to center. This one works much better.

Then, I made an access plate that is held on with one screw and siliconed around. I bolted it all together and siliconed all of the joints.

Then, to make my fairing, I made a card board box, suspended the drive leg in the middle of the box and poured two part expanding foam into the box. When the foam dried, I ripped off the cardboard and proceeded to sculpt out a nice tear drop shape.

After i was happy with my sculpture, I wrapped it in a few layers of fiberglass, then whetted it out with epoxy and wrapped in in stretch seal to cure. I sandwiched it between two flat plates and 75 pounds to make certain that the exact width was the same as the drive leg bay (or I wouldn’t be able to get it in or out!).

After it curred, I coated it with Bondo and sanded smooth.

Since the gear box is water proof, and since I have sealed all of the joins, gaps, bolts, etc with silicon, AND covered the whole unit with foam, multiple layers of fiberglass, soaked in resin, then a Bondo otter coat, it ‘should’ be water proof.

The next thing I did was coat the rudder with micro and sand smooth.

Then I re-built parts of my steering mechanism. During the pool test I noticed that the threaded rod connected to my steering tube was flexing a bit and also rubbing against the side deck. I also noted that during a hard turn, my handle clamp would slip. So, I added a pin to the clamps on my steering handle and the clamp on the rudder steering tube in the back. I also replaced the threaded rod with a stainless steel tube.

The very last item on the list was to install my soft decking. I am using aircraft wing material called SuperFlite Light fabric – like Dacron. I bonded the fabric to the gunwales of the bow and stern compartments using contact cement. Then I used a hot air gun to shrink the material tight. It came out really sweet – like a drum!. I made a small test piece and poured water on it and it leaked like a sieve. Darn. So, I called my local composites shop, Industrial Paints and Plastics and asked what I could paint the Dacron fabric with. He said he has customers painting sail cloth and fabric wings with a water based marine polyurethane top coat, so I ordered some red and painted the decks.

Now I need to dust off my two way radios used for the 24 hour HPV record in Eureka, and my wicked powerful HID headlight that I used for the failed 24 hour record attempt in Alabama. The HID headlight will be necessary to see where I am going in the dark hours on the lake during the 24 hour HPB record attempt 4 weeks.

I think I’m in the lake on Sunday. If you are local, and want to come out, then email me for details.

Well, I checked off pretty much the last major item on the ever-growing TODO list for WiTHiN today. I was supposed to be out on my bike all day today, but it snowed yesterday and rained all day today, so I postponed the ride for tomorrow and made further progress on WiTHiN today.

The only major item still left is the lake test – and this is the big one. I know WiTHiN floats and is fairly stable from the pool test. I also know that the drive, prop and steering works. What I do not yet know, and this is HUGELY important, is how fast WiTHiN is. If for some reason, our calculations are wrong about the hull shape and prop specs using my known rpm and power, then there is a possibility WiTHiN won’t be efficient enough for a 24 hour distance record attempt. So far, everything has worked like it should, but I know from experience that you just can’t assume things until they have been tested.

Again, the calculations that I really hope to verify this weekend at Glenmore Reservoir, are as follows:

RPM = 78 rpm (verified)
Power input = 149 watts (verified)
Weight = 122 kg (verified)
Drive efficiency = 95% (verified)
Prop efficiency = 84.7%
Speed = 10.2 kph

If I spend 24 hours at 150 watts, then my ending average including everything should be about 110 watts. 110 watts converts to 9 km/hr average speed, so I should be good for 216 km or so. The current HPB record as recognized by the human powered vehicle association is 168 km. The rules are here.
Now, if I really messed my prop up, and the hull drag is WAY higher than we estimated, then I would need to be no more than 12% slower (7 km/hr) to still travel 168 km.

I have a separate update coming detailing all of the progress on finishing WiTHiN that has been completed over the last week.

The pool test was a success – until the chain snapped.

After the half marathon, I sat at my desk and stressed about where our predicted water line was on WiTHiN and how it was going to totally flood the boat through the drive leg. I had visions of it spaying violently up through the gaps in the foam plug and drive leg. Horror in the YWCA pool. The boat sinks and they have to drain the whole pool to get my boat out. Then they hand me a $10,000 invoice for the mess.

I even spent an hour on Skype with Rick calculating the exact location of the water level. It should be about 15 mm ABOVE the top of the wall of the drive leg bay. No doubt about it. If my plug and drive leg itself aren’t water tight, water should just flow up through those openings. Why didn’t I make the wall higher? I forget – There was a legitimate reason, but I forgot what it was. Rick reminds me that during the design phase, I lowered the drive leg bay walls a bit to allow the drive leg to rotate up through the hole cut in the hull. I had added a lip to the drive leg bay wall, but it was flexible rubber at the hinge to get around it – I wasn’t at all confident that it would hold back the flood.

Ben and Stefan came over and we discussed the issue. Someone had the brilliant idea of simply duct taping the bottom of the hull around the drive leg and plug. This way we would be able to conduct all the tests required and be guaranteed that we won’t sink. The after that, pull the tape off and test out the drive leg wall.

So that’s what we did. We taped up everything using Gorilla Tape (amazing stuff – really) and the inside of WiTHiN was dry. We had three 25 meter lanes at the downtown YWCA, so I was only able to just get WiTHiN moving forward before I had to slam on the breaks by pedalling backward. It was very responsive turning and it was surprisingly stable. It never felt like it was going to tip – even on the sharpest turn.

I stood up and rocked it, still no tipping. I jumped out into the pool and climbed back in from deep water – very stable, no problem. I does not look like outriggers will be required. I think that I have kept the weight low in the hull, and I think that the Hyak sea kayak hull is a fairly stable shape.

Then we rigged up some nylon rope to the rudder then around a pulley attached to the diving board rail down to a 25 pound weight. This is to test the drive leg and prop – if everything is working properly, I should be able to lift the 25 pound weight with about 300 watts of power. As I started to crank on it, the chain broke. That was one thing that I had forgot to do – replace my work chain with a good chain. I had broken apart that old chain about two dozen times and it was only meant as a very temporary chain. No wonder it broke. Oh well.

We pulled the Gorilla Tape off the bottom and – no water. I bounced around a bunch in WiTHiN and still dry as a bone. Then we pulled the drive leg bay plug out and noted that the water line was about 1/2″ BELOW the top of the bay wall. That was a pleasant surprise. Then I rotated the drive leg out and still no overflow. The water level at the drive leg slot was much closer to the top of the wall, but my rubber lip was doing it’s job and keeping any water from splashing over into the boat. This was GREAT news! I think the reason the water line was slightly lower in the bow where the drive leg is located is probably because of weight distribution causing a slight bow-up geometry.

All in all, a successful day. A PR at the half marathon in the morning, then a successful pool test that night.

Next – open water to see if WiTHiN is as fast as it is supposed to be. This is a critical test. If for some unknown reason, WiTHiN isn’t close to it’s 10 km/hr predicted speed at 150 watts of power, then breaking the current record of 168 km is going to be difficult.

I would like to get WiTHiN into Glenmore reservoir this weekend if possible. The ice just melted and it’s all open now. I need to find some support – someone in a boat to help film and to be there for safety in case I go for a swim. That water is only about 2 degrees C.

PR half marathon 1:27 and 9th place. BAREFOOT

It’s always thrilling to set new personal records. I’ve been trying to break the 90 minute barrier at the half marathon distance for years and I demolished it today with a 1:27 finish at the Calgary Police Half Marathon. I also moved into the top 10 in my division which I am totally thrilled with.

Ready for my secret weapon? Here it is:

Well, It’s not actually BARE foot, but close enough. They are aqua socks – made to keep scuba divers feet warm in the water. They feature a thin rubber bottom that provides some traction (they work awesome on ice) and a small measure of protection for your feet bottoms.

Would you be surprised if I told you that 3 million years of evolution has provided human beings with feet that we can run with? Gasp!

There has been plenty of research on the merits of using our built-in equipment rather than something from the Nike marketing division. The short of it is, less injury, better economy. Read this abstract for the nitty gritty.

My buddy Barefoot Ted runs 100 mile ultra marathons on rocky trails BAREFOOT. Check out this video clip of him running on ROCKS

How dark the con of man.

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Helen had a great race too with a PR coming off of a really bad hamstring injury. The day was pretty cool with rain threatening but there wasn’t a lot of wind like last year – probably perfect temperatures for a half. Pool test for WiTHiN tonight – hopefully my lucky streak continues.

I designed and ordered some T-shirts from Zazzle.com for my crew at the 24 hour event. If you would like one, you can order your own from Zazzle. Just follow the link below to order. You can change the shirt style, specify a different color, the size, or even change the design. And, it’s only $19 – not bad. Unfortunately, none of your $19 contribution will go to the expedition, but you will be supporting poor Google who owns Zazzle. you can also buy this sporty yet fashionable Critical Power T.

CLICK HERE TO ORDER!

Well, it has been a fairly hectic week, but I finally checked off the last item on my list of stuff to finish before the pool test on Sunday night.

The biggest job was making the prop. Rick Willoughby created this great step by step instruction manual on building the prop that he custom designed for my 80 rpm cadence, my 150 watt power output and the Nimus Hyak kayak hull shape. The most difficult part, after figuring out which way to twist the metal for my drive direction, was keeping the front face, back face, leading edge and trailing edges identified. Ricks instructions were great, and I was very proud of my creation. Until we discovered that I had mixed up the front face / back face of one blade. ARGH!!! I was being so careful.

Anyhow, it’s not the most efficient due to this mess-up, but it will give me something to run some tests with at least. We rough;y calculated that it could be about 1/2 km per hour slower than a properly built version. I’ll have to build another one. I ordered more 1/8″ stainless steel plate, so I’ll have to at least wait until the material arrives. I would MUCH rather just pay a qualified person to build me a prop. 2 to 10 or more percent in efficiency loss will mean distance lost during the 24 hour record attempt. An efficient prop is important, so I would much rather invest in something that I know is as good as it can get rather than spend countless days going through a learning curve as I trial and error my own prop.

The next item completed was the filling of the side walls with expanding foam and a fiberglass cap. Thanks to Stefan who came over to help.

Then I tackled the drive leg well lip. What a pain this was. The water level will probably be a bit higher than the drive leg well walls, so I needed to add a raised lip around the edge. Easier said than done. I started by building a plywood perimeter, but I could only go half way before getting all tangled up with the hinged drive leg. I stressed and stressed about how to build that area up and ended up with a solution I hate. It’s a soft rubber edge that bends and folds around the drive leg hinge. It looks like crap and I don’t think it’s going to work. We may be LUCKY in that the water level might not go higher than the DL well walls and I can rip that ugly rubber lip off. We’ll find out on the water tomorrow. Basically, the lip should only be required when the plug is removed to rotate the drive leg out of the water. Once the drive leg has been rotated out, the holes can be plugged up again. We just need to stop water from flooding the boat for the few seconds it takes between pulling the plug, rotating out the leg, and then replacing the plug. Hopefully, the water line will be low enough to not require any additional edging. We’ll see.

I added my SRM meter to the steering lever and built a head rest for the seat.

The final task completed today was to flip WiTHiN over and sand all the epoxy drips off the hull. There are plenty of rough fiberglass cut-you pricks all over the place inside the boat. I need to find some kind of paint or coating that is thick, will seal up all the glass slivers and provide a nice, smooth surface. Does anyone of something that you can use on boats to sort of finish and seal the surface?

I think this is the first Pedal The Ocean newspaper article:

I completed my first long ride today – 5 hours from home to Elbow Falls and back. It felt great – the leg fatigue that I felt on my first 90 minute ride of the season a couple of days ago was gone. My watts average was up as well. My last long ride was the 24 hour distance record on July 22, 2006 – 9 months ago. Today I felt like I could have gone 8 hours if I had to.

My training goals are to increase my weekly long ride by about 100 km per week. I started with 120 km today, next Friday I’ll do 200, then 250 the next week, then 300, then I’ll taper to 100 km the following week and then the HPB record the week after that. This is going to be fun.

I got so much done on WiTHiN this weekend.

I set myself a deadline of this next weekend to have WiTHiN ready for water testing. Stefan organized a local pool for me for Sunday night, so now I have to get everything finished. If you are local, come on out to the pool test on Sunday night 7:00 pm to 8:00 pm. It’s at the YWCA on 5th downtown (note – NOT the YMCA).

First, I glassed in those longitudinal bulkheads. I cut out 1/2″ thick Styrofoam boards and then covered with fiberglass Roving and whetted out with epoxy resin. Then instead of vacuum bagging, I wrapped the boards tightly with shrink wrap plastic and placed them under a flat board with a couple hundred pounds on top. This worked out better than bagging, as there was no creasing of the glass fabric.

I plan on pouring expanding foam into the space between the bulkheads to finish the wide gunwale.

Ben came over to help and he worked on cutting out some foam for a plug for the drive leg well. I finished up the plug by capping it with a piece of plywood and a handle from an old sanding block. This fits the hole in the drive leg bay very tightly. I glued on the cut-out from the kayak bottom so the bottom of the plug is flush to the bottom of the hull. I still need to sand down the epoxy drips, and I can also fill in the gap between the plug and the hull with a silicon bead, then slice it with a razor. I have no idea if this is going to leak or not….

I added two triangular plywood panels to the spaces in my drive leg, then filled it up with epoxy/micro filler.

I made an adjustable seat back support with two pieces of plywood. An aluminum rod runs between the two ratchet style supports mounted on each long bulk. I placed a foam sleeve over the aluminum rod to more evenly spread out the weight of the seat back – this works very well. Now I can not only move my seat forward or back, but I can also adjust the seat back angle up or down.

The last item was the rudder. I was going to rig up some line and pulleys, but I played around with a long plastic tube I had and found that if I supported the semi-flexible tube once in the middle, it was VERY stiff, strong and light. Probably not something for ocean conditions, but I think it should do fine for a calm lake. The steering lever is some old bike parts I have that I put together. Two carbon tubes with a slip fit – the larger diameter one bonded into the gunwale, and the smaller diameter tube with a small handle bar clamped to it. The other end has a threaded rod with a swivel rod end on it which guides the long plastic push/pull rod. The push/pull rod runs though a small plastic sleeve bonded to the gunwale in the stern and up to a handle bar stem that clamps onto my rudder steering tube. It all works fairly slick.

nest on the agenda is the prop – I’ll start that tomorrow after my CSS school KidPower presentation. Then I need to make up the drive leg bay lip, and I should be able to finish everything up and attend to the details by Friday-Saturday. Should be all ready for the pool test on Sunday.