Towing Rig for Sea Wind Canoe

Tue - January 3, 2006

2006 WaterTribe Ultimate Florida Challenge goes around Florida. Unfortunately, Florida is not an island and the race course includes 40 mile highway portage between St Mary and Suwannee Rivers.

Some thoughts about my options for doing that portage with Sea Wind canoe:

- A traditional portage, i.e., carrying a boat is out of question due to time constrains. The highway invites to use some sort of a cart anyway. Verlen Kruger and Steve Landick were doing even longer highway portages by carrying their boats during their Ultimate Canoe Challenge, but they also had to do long portages along trails where carts could not be used (not mentioning climbing walls of Grand Canyon).

- It is possible to carry a full size mountain bike and a cart in my Sea Wind, but it would be too heavy and too awkward for 1160 miles of paddling.

- A folding bike like Dahon Presto Lite or Brompton would be much better but those cute little bikes are too expensive to buy just for one trip.

- Probably, a simple kayak/canoe cart will be sufficient for a flat and straight highway in Florida, perhaps, even just two couples of stern wheels. However, I would like to use a towing setup also for other paddling trips with a more twisty and hilly portage course like a bike trail in the Glenwood Canyon along Colorado River or vicinity of Moab in Utah. So, I need a good cart with a high clearance.

- Walking, though relatively slow, is always possible.

- Inline skates should be much faster for towing. If they don't work for towing I may still enjoy skating as a form of exercise or cross training. Indeed, I started inline skating in August 2005 along bike trails in northern Colorado and really like it. Later, I learned about roller skis which may provide better option for towing but decided to stick with skates.

- Trekking poles may be useful to reduce load on my knees when walking or skating for 40 miles. I like using trekking poles for fast hiking.

I invested $75 into a new "Swedish style" canoe cart on e-bay: 16"x1-3/4" pneumatic wheels, solid and pretty heavy at ~16 lb, folds flat to 31"x18"x6.5", so it can be packed into a canoe but not into a kayak. I can fit the cart to Sea Wind even without dismantling wheels. I will probably take off a kickstand to save some weight.

For a towing rig I am trying to adopt spars of my Pacific Action sail. It is still a working or rather walking prototype. It works pretty nice for walking as demonstrated in my recent video clip. I can even easily push the boat instead of towing.

The inline skating is a different story. I am still experimenting with my rig. It appears that there is no level stretch of a street in my neighborhood. It just looks flat in comparison to the mountains.

A final thought. So, after 3 days of seating in my car and driving from Colorado to Florida and after 3 weeks of seating in my canoe and paddling around Florida I will hopefully arrive to St George on the upper St Mary River and face 40 mile portage. Will I be able to walk or skate after being forced to such a sedimentary life style?