The Pedal Drive

R2AK is one of the very few races in the world that prohibits having a motor onboard. For windless periods, we will use our team-built twin pedal drive system, which is a variant of the systems used on Shear Water Madness and Unfinished Business.  

Compared to most other R2AK competitors, you will see a few things that are different about our system. We have taken the approach of direct bike-chain drive, which means that the person must be facing towards (or away) from the centerline of the boat, rather than facing forward or backwards relative to the boat travel.  Our approach eliminates gearboxes or twisted chains.  Our system exposes the chain to salt water which increases the drag on the drive a bit, but we are designing for a cruise speed of 2 knots in our 6000 lb loaded boat - this drag is not a big deal.  Other competitors have used nicely streamlined drives repurposed from smaller craft, designed for 4-5 knots speed in a 600 lb boat.

A really key part of our philosophy is to have two drives.  We can still do 1.5 knots if one drive breaks, and we will bring spare parts to rebuild one unit.  Some people have asked "why not have 6 drives, one for each crew member?"  The reason is that the power needed to move the boat increases steeply with speed.  Six drives might get us to 4 knots but we would all be exhausted in an hour.

Another design consideration is the speed of deplying and retracting the drive.  Elusive is a sailboat and we want to pedal as little as possible.  It is 600 nautical miles from Victoria to Ketchikan, which would be 300 hours of pedalling at 2 knots - 12.5 days of round the clock pedalling.

Will the new drive work for the whole race?  Good question!