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.

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: