I have been away from the forum for a couple of months, but I don't get too much time to access the internet from my Hobie 16. My 81 year old partner and I are 1060 miles into our 2003 mile trip from Fairmont, WV to New Orleans. We expect the entire trip to last three months. We left August 17 and are now in Paducah, KY. We sailed the length of the Monongahela River to Pittsburgh, and now we have almost completed the Ohio River. We are a few days away from the Mississippi River. You can get the details of our journey at http://cureals.home.att.net
I am sorry, but I rarely have access to the internet, let alone the time to read the forums, but I try to get to the email about once a week.
Greg, H16, H14
Mission Cure ALS 2003
You should see the scum that has accumulated on my hulls. There's a picture of it in the progress reports section of the website.

This is awesome!

When Rick and two of his buddies were about 20, with just enough college to make them dangerous, they decided to do a similar thing -- they were going to paddle from Cincinnati to New Orleans. They turned a canoe into a trimaran, using gutter downspouts for amas (crimping the ends).

They had it all figured out: They would rotate on paddling, with the guys in the front and the back working while the one in the middle rested. Calculating the currents of the Ohio River and the Mississippi River, they figured they would be in New Orleans in 30 days.

After the first day of paddling all day, they thought they had gone a long way. They pulled out that evening on the riverbank and went to a local beverage establishment to get a beer. They asked where they were and found out they were still in Cincinnati. At the end of a week of paddling, they only made it to Louisville, Kentucky -- that's where they gave up their mission, pulled out, and left their "trimaran" at a local marina.

Their mistake had been in calculating the current going with them but in neglecting to calculate the wind going against them -- the prevailing wind in that area is out of the southwest. (This was before Rick had ever gotten involved with sailing, or he obviously would have considered that factor.)

I met up with those guys near St. Francisville, Louisiana. Totally by chance I came upon Greg and his wife near the Ferry crossing (on the Mississippi River) and remembered seeing his post here. There trip is amazing. So far they have been on the river about 13 weeks. The day before they made only about 14 miles (wind on the nose). Their best day was about 54 miles, if I remember correctly. A loaded H16 is not the best for speed, oh and that's mostly paddling. You've got to see this setup, the pictures only give a hint of the rig they have.

Challenge to all, support ALS research. You never know who, when or why, but people get it and there is no cure for it... Yet. I made a donation to the cause. Its not much, but a lot of small donations add up.

Clayton

We're done. The little sailboat, as the tow captains referred to us, is back home. We completed our journey a few days ago at the outskirts of New Orleans. Other than scum on the hulls, my little H16 held up like a trooper. Early in the trip we were taking on some water, but a couple of applications of silicon to the deck hatches and pylon joints cleared that up completely. I recommend that people do not sail the lower Mississippi, especially below Baton Rouge. You should have a powerful boat with at least
two engines, and even then it is a scary, hazardous area. I had to be in constant radio communication with the commercial traffic in that area, and they didn't like having a craft like ours near them. Headwinds decreased our control and made passing obstacles a long drawn out affair that was hazardous. Anyway, I am back home and back to the forums here at catsailor. I will be happy to entertain questions to this thread.
My 81 year old mate and I are doing well after the ordeal. My weight dropped from 171 to 154, and Ted's pants are falling down.
Greg
H14,H16

Wow! What a story! And what a tremendous accomplishment! You guys are true survivors. And it's great that you are home for Thanksgiving.

I have a few questions:
How much of the time, or the distance (however you want to express it) was the wind on your nose?

And how much of the time, or the distance, did you have to pedal?

Also, who was taking the pictures, you guys or Arlene, or both? And what kind of camera were you using?

And, most of all, did you achieve your goal of raising money for ALS research?

Ted used to exagerate and say the wind was in our face all the time. I estimate we had about 24 hours of real sailing. (no pedalling) I encountered one stretch where we were on a beam reach for 7 hours straight in 25 to 35 mph winds, and that was one rough and scary day.
The winds had to be favorable and greater than 8 mph before we had enough speed to quit pedalling. With the small main, we had to be more than 60 degrees off the wind to power up, and when we were going close to weather we usually had to pedal also. Whenever the winds were light and favorable it did make our pedalling easier. In many cases the apparant wind made Ted think it was in our faces. On many occaisions the wind would change direction with the river course to keep it in our faces through a 180 degree bend.
We pedalled for about 88 days out of our 99 days. We had about 7 days where we stayed off the river, mostly due to storms or severe headwinds. We spent two days in Greenville to rest. We were exhausted then.
Arlene and I used a Cannon G2, but I lowered the resoulution on the web page to allow faster loading on the internet.
Money raised?
The last I heard a month ago was about $5000 (that's less than what we spent on the mission), but I hope that future publicity that Ted gets and the web pages might generate more awareness and potentially more contributions.
People along the river will be talking about the unique, crazy boat they saw for a long time.

Greg
H14,H16
p.s. My boat is anxious to be descummed and fully dressed for the 2004 spring sailing. To see a shot of the boat in action try http://cureals.home.att.net/pedal.jpg