Solar powered raft motoring

[kayaktheworld]

Spent 6 days crossing Lake Powell on a prototype solar rig from Jack's Plastic Welding last summer. This was part of a longer trip as 3 college friends and I paddled from Rocky Mountain NP in CO to Lake Mead.

We made a short video of it, so check it out if you haven't ever seen a solar powered raft before.



More videos from the long journey are on this vimeo: https://vimeo.com/rockiesproject

Enjoy and please let me know what you think. Thanks!

David

[skifishbum]

pretty cool viddy
but

I want to say publicly, for the record, that the idea of decommissioning Glen Canyon Dam and draining Lake Powell is outside the Circle of Reality."

Bruce Babbitt, July 14, 2000

don't let the "circle of reality" fuck with your

[Tye 1on]

Cool. I was on the first electric motor powered Grand Canyon trip back in...2001? Had essentially a 25hp motor on a 22' snout rig. Boat did fine, but battery charging was a challenge, had to fire up a [pretty quiet] generator every couple evenings for a few hours. Brainstormed an idea of having an arm off the back of the boat while at camp, with a propeller hung off of it, into the river, spinning all night long generating power.

good times...

[kayaktheworld]

tye 1on-

That is sweet, were you using gas or propane to power the generator? And did you motor all the rapids with it?

skifishbum-

That is definitely the line being sold. But I don't think they will stick to it forever. As we all know, water is scarce in the southwest and is basically invaluable to life down there. Currently ~6-8% of the Colorado's annual flow evaporates off of Powell each year. Powell doesn't serve any major population centers, and with both Powell and Mead consistently at 50%, Mead could likely hold all that water, thus approximately cutting in half the available surface area for evaporation.

Will they drain Powell because a bunch of granola crunching hippies want to see Glen Canyon again? Nope, never. But they might do it if and when that unnecessary 8% water loss per year is the difference between economic growth and bunch people not being able to live in/move to the SW.

Just my opinion, obviously this issue is so complex that it's impossible to make a perfect prediction.

[Tye 1on]

tye 1on-

That is sweet, were you using gas or propane to power the generator? And did you motor all the rapids with it?

yep, ran 'em all. Not personally, had a bunch of owner/guides on the trip, Cam, Garrett and Les took turns at the tiller. I think it was a gas generator, it may have been diesel...

[kayaktheworld]

yep, ran 'em all. Not personally, had a bunch of owner/guides on the trip, Cam, Garrett and Les took turns at the tiller. I think it was a gas generator, it may have been diesel...

Sounds awesome. Those must have been beefy batteries to hold that much charge.

Electric motor is definitely the way to go.... it sucks to have to listen to/smell a 2-stroke outboard for multiple hours a day.

[Jethro]

when I went down last, in 2002, most rigs were four stroke. Its hard to believe many boats are still running 2T motors.