the archimedes
Note:This section is still under construction and we will be including a lot more detail later but if you're curious, you can reference the blog that Diane kept as we were working on the Arc for three years. www.archemedesproject.blogspot.com. Besides the construction details, there are a whole lot of dolphin, bird, and sunset pics too.
The Ketch de Jour was moored in Matlacha for over 10 years when I found it in an advanced state of decay.
After closing the deal on my new boat I immediately got to work making it seaworthy. The first thing I had to do was replace one of the main bearings in the driveline. It was completely deteriorated causing excessive vibration and essentially rendering the auxiliary motor inoperative.
Here the Ketch du Jour is moored in Matlache Florida where I found it in 2007.
Within two weeks after I bought the Ketch I was almost killed in an automobile accident. It took me nearly a year to completely recover. With a new found view on just how short life can be, I was in no mood to work on fixing up an old boat when I had a perfectly good Columbia 34 ready to go sailing. After storing the Ketch du Jour in Matlache for about a year and half, I moved it up the Calusahatchee River to some private property on an oxbow in LaBelle. Here we are making our first passage in the tired old ketch.
The sails were still intact but there was so much dry rot in some of the spars we where afraid to try any sailing. I was probably too paranoid and I regret I never at least tried to "sail" the old boat. Maybe better safe than sorry though.
We literally "dropped" the mast when we tried to step it down. It was quite the drama but we succeeded in taking the rigging down without breaking anything that mattered or getting hurt.
But it was not to be. Just two weeks after buying the boat, I was in a severe automobile accident and very nearly killed. After almost a week in intensive care I was released and began a long rehabilitation process. Although I was able to hobble back to work as an engineer in about 4 months, I was walking with a cane for nearly a year.
So when I recovered I was in no mood to work on an old boat when I had a perfectly good 34 foot Columbia sloop named the Georgia Girl that was begging me to take her sailing. So I wound up bumming around on GG for the next few years and leaving the Hal moored on an Oxbow in LaBelle Florida.
During that time I joined the Sierra Club and got to be good friends with an old woman named Ellen Peterson who was a local, iconic environmental activist in SW Florida. While staying at her Happehatchee preserve one winter volunteering to help around the property while she was recovering from cancer, the idea for the Arc was born. Ellen had a passion for paddling her beloved Estero River but was so debilitated by the cancer at the time she was unable to get out on the water any more. She had an old golf cart she was junking and I had an old dinghy a friend of mine had given me when he moved back to Atlanta from La Belle. There was also an old Minkota trolling motor in Ellen’s shed and I got the idea to take some solar panels from alternative energy workshops we were doing for the Sierra Club, and build Ellen a boat that she didn’t have to row. With the top off the golf cart and two of its batteries that still had some life left, Dave’s old dinghy, and the Minkota trolling motor we built a little solar powered dinghy for Ellen. I was surprised how well it actually worked and got an idea. The rest as they say, is history.
About the time I hatched the idea of convert the Halcyon from the Ketch of the Day into a solar electric power cruiser with a never ending gas tank, I met Diane Eggers while staying at my home in the mountains of East Tennessee during the summer . Recently widowed and with a rare spirit of adventure, (probably a result of her upbringing as an Air Force brat), Diane was game to partner with me on my borderline crazy idea.
So for the next three years we split our time between summers in the Tennessee mountains where I made money fixing air conditioners and remodeling houses, to winters in La Belle, where we spent the money transforming the Arc into the world’s largest solar powered concrete boat. Like many remodeling projects, it was a lot more difficult and took longer than planned, and although it is far from complete, the Arc is definitely seaworthy and we have begun to live our dream of exploring the coastal water of the eastern seaboard, starting with a little spin around Florida on a little cruise aid for a Sustainable Florida.
So for the next three years we split our time between summers in the Tennessee mountains where I made money fixing air conditioners and remodeling houses, to winters in La Belle, where we spent the money transforming the Arc into the world’s largest solar powered concrete boat. Like many remodeling projects, it was a lot more difficult and took longer than planned, and although it is far from complete, the Arc is definitely seaworthy and we have begun to live our dream of exploring the coastal water of the eastern seaboard, starting with a little spin around Florida on a little cruise aid for a Sustainable Florida.
April 2011
April 2012
March 2013
November 2014
