Jun 14 2008
Sail the Meadows
Click the image for more information on water travel vehicles at Lightwheels
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- Fast, very fast…
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- Replacement Paddle
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- Fast and stable
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- Ride Hydro for Two
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- A classic symbol of fun
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- Service Boat
4 Responses to “Sail the Meadows”
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A place for the future (kayaks flitting along at twice the speed as formerly) and the past (boats woven and carved out of logs), electric paddleboats and rides in giant dragonboats.
On our last outing to the park, inspection of the unusable paddleboats with missing paddlewheels or rudders or whatever, in the fenced area, showed that there are six of them with intact watertight hulls. At the time, I suggested that the hulls could be used in combination as flotation for a larger deck, to use as a sort of pontoon boat.
Later, it occurred to me that those plastic hulls could also be the basis for electrical propulsion retrofitting, with a new and more attractive varnished wooden deck added, to replace the current plastic one, and maybe a canvas surrey top for shade.
I have some nice 400 watt 24 volt brushless electric motors on hand, and now I’m watching an eBay auction for a 1/3 hp centrifugal water pump. Driven by the motor I have, that pump would have an output of 35 gallons per minute at top speed. That’s not a huge amount of output, but it would certainly act as a sort of water jet drive, producing probably the same speed as the boat’s usual paddle drive when cranked really fast.
The surrey top could also incorporate a solar panel for battery charging.
I would imagine that there are other people out there who would enjoy the challenge of turning a paddleboat into an electric watercraft, to have use of it at Meadow Lake whenever they wanted. And it would be available for rental at any other time.
Since there’s an outboard motor hanging around the shop, this might be
an interesting project for using it. After all, who wants a noisy
2-stroke outboard motor defacing the air over Meadow Lake?
http://www.psnw.com/~jmrudholm/etekoutboard.html
http://www.psnw.com/%7Ejmrudholm/etekoutboard.html>>
Josh has one of these Etek electric motors for his current trike
project, and it’s fabulous.
On the other hand, if you just wanted to buy one with the same motor as the basis, there’s the official Briggs&Stratton product, which looks nice. http://www.briggsandstratton.com/engine_power/details.aspx?pid=172
I didn’t see a price mentioned.
I’m seeing a fairly large framed plywood deck, mounted on about six defunct pedal boat hulls, or whatever, with a rear transom fitted to mount a silent electric outboard motor. Pedal-boat hulls are almost 8 feet long by about 5 foot beam, giving a basic footprint of 10 feet by 24 feet. The flat deck would serve as a platform for erecting light wooden armatures surrounded by a chicken wire form, which could be covered in wadded tissue or paper mache’ or fiberglass, or whatever. It would be a kind of “marine parade float” deal, which would silently cruise Meadow Lake looking extremely cool. Design could change once a month, in season. It would be nice if it also had some special effects and multi-media going on, too, for entertainment’s sake.
Being electric, it could be pretty easily radio-controlled. But, if you just wanted to have an employee cruising around Meadow Lake and showing it off, you could probably also sell rides around the lake on it, with the parade-float design taking seating for a few passengers into account. Maybe even furnish them with interesting costumes to wear while cruising. And sell them a photograph taken from shore as a souvenir, of course.
This B&S motor isn’t one of those typical electric trolling motors. It’s more equivelent to the sort of 2-stroke outboard used for auxiliary propulsion by moderate-sized sailboats (3-5 HP).
I’ve continued thinking about both floating sculptures and amusing customizations of the existing pedal boat fleet.
One theme I thought of today is the “Rubber Duckie” motif, which could apply to either. I did some Googling, and found numerous examples of interesting variations, in various scales. I’d originally been thinking of Rubber Duckies in the form of an inflatable costume for fitting onto a pedal boat hull, as a floating sculpture. But the same concept could be applied to a functional pedal boat.
Rubber Duckie Regattas are a popular fund-raising event for many communities world-wide nowadays. The way they work is that people pay about $5 for an entry fee, for which they are given a number corresponding to the number on one of about a thousand typical rubber duck tub toys. The ducks are dumped en mass into a stream or river. The first ones to cross the finish line are the winners of prizes.
That’s a fun thing to do, of course; but unfortunately, Meadow Lake doesn’t have an appreciable current, which rules out that sort of event.
However, it would be possible for us to have a Rubber Duckie Regatta if the duckies were pedal boats wearing duckie costumes. Local businesses could sponsor entries by paying a certain amount of money to cover the making of the entrant boat’s costume and a portion of the expense of putting on the event.
It would be quite a sight to see a fleet of large yellow rubber duckies racing down the length of Meadow Lake, then paddling back to the starting point on the second leg of the course. Television coverage of such a picturesque event would be a given, of course.
One of the google results I got was a huge inflatable duckie made by a Dutch artist, which was floated on the Loire river, in France, as part of an art festival:
http://www.nuacco.com/2007/07/25/rubber-duck-for-the-giants/
I ran into several examples of what seems like a commercially available one:
http://picasaweb.google.com/askeehan/SoDa2008_0727/photo#5227902713241483874
It’s a bit smaller than the Dutch one, but still relatively huge. One of those would look great floating on Meadow Lake, as a cute giant sculpture.
Another, different one:
http://www.ctnewsjunkie.com/environment/rubber_ducky_youre_the_one.php
This one may be traveling around the US as part of a campaign to convince state legislatures to ban a certain toxic plasticizer from children’s toys, as I also saw the same duckie design parked in front of California’s capitol building.
Another Dutch artist has created a nice 2.5 meter tall duckie:
http://rubaduck.com/news/rubber_duck_news-200708-large-ducks.htm
A logical way of making the costumes would be electro-welded yellow vinyl, using George’s machine. Typically, the large inflatable duckies are kept inflated by a small ducted fan continuously blowing air into them. They also could be fabricated by butt-gluing 1/2″ thick foam rubber panels together. The finished duckie form could then be painted yellow. Yellow vinyl would look better, however, as it’s smoother-surfaced than foam rubber.
There is a large (60″ tall, 46″ long) duckie pool float available for $26.99. This isn’t big enough for covering a pedal boat, but they could be raced by kids with the use of double-ended kayak paddles, and the price is pretty reasonable, considering the size.
http://www.qualitypooltoys.com/sl9062.html