 My name is Rachel Sunschal of the program and development coordinator here at the library. Good evening, Will. Thank you for coming. Tonight, we have Steve Love, who's doing a presentation on his boat called Sled. Having spent nearly 30 years working with, living aboard, and sailing boats, Steve Love uses his knowledge and experience to design the rugged sled. He has sailed around the world, supporting his trips with money earned from carpentry and construction jobs. Nowadays, Steve lives in Montpelier and works part-time as a videographer for Orca Media. And I want to thank Orca Media to hear this evening here videotaping this program. And please help me welcome Steve Love. Thank you. Thank you again for coming. Melakai was one of the first cameras to have a wrap-around windows. Her designer was an engineer from, he's Hawaiian, but he had four different engineering degrees from University of Chicago. And he was, for me, Leonardo da Vinci. And in his boat, it's the first sailing yacht to have a wrap-around windows because he was on the design team of the Sears building. And that would be the first catamaran to have a hollow plywood mast, which sounds unthinkable, but it's still going 40 years later after 100,000 miles of sailing without breaking. So his and my experiment, building his design, it worked really nice. The hulls, when I say were, the boat's still functional. It's in the Caribbean now. The hulls were asymmetric and shaped like airplane wings. The mast was hollow made of plywood. When Melakai was designed in the late 1960s, catamarans then were considered experimental and kind of crazy. You know the story of today's America's Cup. They only go 15 miles an hour now. Honolulu was my home port for 15 years, where I sailed out of there, lived and worked there, family and kids there, just a lot in Hawaii. But from Honolulu, I sailed practically in all the island countries of the South Pacific, studying Polynesian, then Melanesian, and then later Indonesian native craft. And it was, in my younger years as anthropologist, a big interest to me, seeing how advanced some of the quote unquote primitive ideas were rope lashings. There's my stick here, which we won't have on a Melakai. I use the latest of the best, fittings, marine fittings, and everything, marine and the best, a break. And for years, every time something breaks, and of course when you're way away from the hardware store, the marine store, well, you do your best, which is lashing. So sometimes I can remember many things that I lashed, and then never got around to getting the part to fix it, and only found out that the lashing lasts longer than the stainless steel parts. So on the boat that we'll be talking about, the sled is nearly all lashing, which is kind of weird, but it fits the theme, and I know lashing, and I trust it, and it's easily replaceable anywhere. And Hawaii, when I was building this boat, I was shipwrecked on the Hokaleia, which is a 60 foot authentic in shape and design, ancient Polynesian double-haul canoe that evolved in being called Catarans. This boat, with the Polynesian voicing society, was created to demonstrate that the current theory and anthropology of those days was that the poor dumb savage has just floated from South America all over the Pacific somehow by accident and populated it, which is about as stupid as you can get, because the Polynesians came from east to west and did marvelous feats of sailing and trading and discovery, and the rest of the world was afraid to get off the side of shore. And somehow we have a hard time giving them credit, where credit is due. So that's what this Hokaleia... Oh, here's the picture of it that I put up here. I didn't get it on here, but here's the picture. Hokaleia was to demonstrate the genius of the Polynesians and Polynesian navigation. And that boat, launched in 1976, sailed for 30 years all over the whole Pacific, back and forth, states all over, with no compass, no radio, no modern gear, and, of course, no GPS. To demonstrate how profound the mind of the Polynesians were, and I sailed with Mau B. Log, who was the navigator. He was the last navigator. He was from Micronesia to have his own navigation school. And that was wonderful because it has preserved that art. And then with the Hokaleia, it became sort of a revival of Polynesian culture. And now, today, there's dozens of these kind of boats all over the Pacific. And the theme was also, keep your language, keep your culture. And part and sort of beginning around the time that this was built, Herb Gane was a Hawaiian artist who's theme was, Be Proud of Your Culture. And so the Hawaiian language became revived. There's probably a couple hundred speakers in those days, and now there's thousands. And so it's a wonderful thing, a very wonderful thing to be involved with. So that's the story of the Hokaleia. And they're now finishing a three year around the world voyage. I think they get back to Hawaii this June. And the theme is climate change, environment, aloha, peace, and all the good things. And again, they sail with no modern instruments and showing the beauty of the Polynesian way. They were in Mystic Seaport last June, where they were the focal boat and the wooden boat show there. So this is big time for me. This is among the initial shop drawings that got the building process started. The purpose of this motor sailor workboat is a prototype for fishing, hunting, research, and the art in regard to climate change. Keep it simple is my motto. This means simple to build, simple to repair, and you can get the materials right out of the everyday normal materials in the hardware store. Nothing exotic. This was a predecessor, actually, in the design stage. And it was 30 feet long, beachable, and mentally arctic. It proved to be a little too expensive for my budget. So I didn't go with that design. It has a winged mast, which was developed when I worked in Gold Coast Shots in the Caribbean. And the neat feature about this is, OK, we have an outboard here, an outboard here, and this is sort of like Catamaran. And then in the center is an open place in the cockpit. It's a work area of 6 by 16 feet. And you can drive this boat up on the motorboat. You can drive this boat up on the bigger boat in the ocean while you're working at speed. And that's a very useful feature for fishing. The stern view, this shows the triple keel and the roll bar concept. The triple keel is one, two, three at the same level, and that's the sled. When this boat gets on ice and we get a blizzard, or just a good gust of wind, which they have all year on and already, you can count on the boat it's going to get knocked over. So I was, I haven't done this yet, but a roll bar. So when she gets blown over on the ice, well, you put the anchor out over here and put the winch up to it and crank her back up. The boat's a line. The boat itself is about 2,500 pounds. And for boats, that's not very heavy. That would be the cabin top. That would be the windshield. This is a sea with storage under. This is fuel, et cetera. There were many designs over five years, something to do in the winter in Vermont, that kept me busy and doing fun things. Okay. The sled was built in a tent in a meadow on the sled and farm. Gail Harris, who's sitting here, my longtime companion and dear friend, allowed me to build this boat on her farm. And she's been wonderful to know in the years I've done her. Basic building materials are quarter inch plywood and 3 eighth inch 8C grade exterior for plywood for the sheathing and common spruce for the framing. You folks here in Vermont take it for granted and build pallets out of it. But when you get too far out of this part of the world, Bruce is precious. And so I feel fortunate to have this very inexpensive, good known material for building boats, particularly spires, because it's light and strong. Besides the plywood and the spruce, I use normal waterproof polyurethane construction cement that you can get everywhere for glue. And then stainless steel fasteners and multiple coats of marine varnish rather than typical epoxy or fiberglass. Because this is a prototype and an experiment, it's not really last met to last that long. So I'm connected with boat builders over time that will be happy to build this design with the best and the latest and long lasting materials after it's proven to be worth doing that. Another possibility is that I would Greenland knew the capital would be a good place to set up a boat building shop and work with the local Inuit people there to build these boats for them if they liked the boat. You know, they might very well say, that's not for me. But if it proves to be useful for their purposes, I would prefer that they build them and the whole thing is theirs. And I don't really want to build boats. I wouldn't mind setting up for them and then bye-bye them onto something else. But that would be my first plan to reproduce the boat. Otherwise, this boat shops all over the East Coast and Caribbean that would be happy to do it. First, to be set up with the bulkheads and the stringers. Stern and cockpit bulkheads with stringers go four and a half. So it's hard to see here, but this is like a strong back, which you build the boat on. It kind of holds it together while you're building it. So the first thing you do is after these are cut out, you set them up and then you hold them together with these stringers, they're called. And then you work on the desired shape. Oh, yeah, OK. Up in the bow, this is looking from the back, the stern. But up in the bow, there's not added anything yet, but there's another two bulkheads. And I mentioned, too, the boat has 12 watertight compartments. In case of collision, I expect to get hold going through ice, beating them on rock and whatever. The boat's going to suffer. But it's easy to repair. I've done salvage and a lot of repair work. And as it turns out, it's sort of easier to repair this boat that doesn't have the cloth, fiber gas cloth, and an epoxy. To make a repair, you take what's called 5200. It's a super boat clogging. And it dries in cold and wet. So you've got a big sludge in the boat. You take a piece of plywood and put that 5200 clogging on there. Use boat nails, stick it on there, and wait a while. And it'll stay there for years. I've made patches that lasted many years like that. So anyway, the boat is meant to be beat up and knocked around and improve what it can be. OK, but also there's a two-inch closed cell styrofoam insulation, which serves as flotation. So likely, Titanic, it's going to be hard to say. The main forward bulkhead is where the mass could be stepped. This is the main forward bulkhead. And it's built in what's called sandwich type construction. It's the same thing I used on the Mellakai. You have quarter inch plywood, your frames and quarter inch plywood. And when you have that sandwich construction, it's super strong. So you could step the mast on it. And also, the bulkheads are the main structural parts of the boat. How do you step the mast onto the lower part? Yeah, I would have a public. OK, this doesn't go to the cabin top. So I would have a metal pipe or a post from the top of this if you're in the boat is here. So you'd have a post because of the cabin top. And you step the mast on top of that. Let me digress a little bit. When I say it could, it probably won't because the underwater configuration is so weird. I still don't know yet where is the balance between the center of effort on the sails and the lateral resistance on what we call keel. But what is keel on this boat is low aspect, which is not the greatest for a sailboat. And so I don't know yet where the proper place for the mast will be. In fact, I can move it. And the mast is A frame. That's so it could be under control lowered and raised at sea. And also, it has a lookout station. We'll talk about that later. OK, the bulkheads are laid out. You can't really see it so much. This is the back of the tent. And across the back is a 16 foot table here. So that workbench is where you build everything. And then from the workbench to the actual back of the boat is only that far. And so it's very easy. And for the old man, I don't have to run around everywhere. And I managed to build a 24 foot mast on the 16 foot table. That was fun. OK, this view of the bow shows the bow, stem, and the stringers as laid out on the strong back with the main forward bulkhead. So this is a strong back. It's also made of spruce. The same material was made out of. This is that bulkhead you saw before from the camera lens. It looks different, but it is the same one. And so this is the bow. And these are the stringers. And that's how you begin your shape. You did build upside down. Yes. Yeah, I didn't mention that. I hope you all can envision that it is upside down right now. Somebody said, that's a weird cabin. Notice the 2 by 3 spruce strong backs that holds the bow frame in place. That's this one. And I mentioned in that. Later, this lumber, as well as the tent frame lumber, was used to complete the bow. When the ground got soggy from a minor flooding, this is on the banks of the Dog River, the strong back became warped and had to be readjusted to be plumb and level. So when this gets out of shape, then the bow gets out of shape. You know, I'm dead. So the best of my ability got it back in shape. And when I was doing that, I was thinking, I wonder what the waves of ocean cares about how perfectly symmetrical your boat is. There's nothing symmetrical in that environment. Everything's like, wow. And we always try to make it just perfectly. And I was saying to myself, don't worry about it. Let's just build a boat. If it don't come out perfect, it's meant to break anyway. So I really feel like what imperfections there are. But you can even see there, at least I can, that this, and I straightened that out. But this is going a little loud in. Well, you straighten it out and nail it there. Anyway, perfectionists wouldn't like working with me. Added to this racing style hull are asymmetrical Kateran keels that form the bottom of the sled. So again, we're upside down. This shows how I first just build the boat in a normal shape. And then I add on these keels, which are the sled. One, two, three. And then these are sheathed with quarter inch plywood. And inside each peel are three water type compartments. So and those are filled with flotation. So I'm not going to hold on. I don't even know the difference, hopefully. The actual work to build the sled took a total of six months over the course of two summers. This is rather slow according to some professional boat builders who might expect to build this boat in 12 weeks. Larger vessels of whatever size are normally built in under a year, unless it's a Navy. And what I learned in this experiment and I basically built the boat alone is that money and manpower make a big difference in the scope of things. This was on a very shoestring budget. The basic bottom of the hull is quarter inch plywood, double quarter inch plywood. And the sled keels are single layer of quarter inch sheathing. So here it's double. And here it's just single quarter inch. It's unbelievably strong. This is the sheathing. And I put a few coats of clear sealer on there, but nothing exotic. And then I threw it in the water like that. And four months later, it was just fine. Eventually I'll put bottom paint, but not yet. Notice the extreme overhang of the vall for climbing on the ice shelves or for beating. Again, it's upside down. But this is an extreme shape, but it has to be so that when you come to an ice shelf, which could be, it depends, any kind of size, the boat will ride up on that. And it's supposed to be able to do that at speed, but not always. Sometimes you just winch it up slowly and carefully. And then this gives you a front and a view of how weird these add-ons are. And that's part of the experiment. Nothing even close to this has ever been done before I've ever seen. So there's still a lot of things to prove about it. From past experience, I know that this hull shape, and I've done sort of similar things on other boats. But I know it tracks wonderfully. It's a very comfortable, smooth ride. But for a sailboat, when it's time to come about sailing, because it tracks well, that's a drawback. And I'm still trying to figure out where the lead boards should go so that it comes about nicely. Where is the lead board? Yeah, good. OK, on a typical sailboat, you have a keel, and on some smaller ones, you have a dagger board. And that would be in the center, and then a case. Well, in the Dutch canals, my kids school in Holland. In the Dutch canals, the canal boats have lead boards. And they're out external to the boat. And they're just pinned. And when you hit the shallow bottom of the canal, it just goes back or bounces up. So I like that feature for many reasons. But to start with, I don't even know where they go yet. So I'll show you later along the rail of the boat on deck are very strong for safety rails. And so yeah, here we go. Here. So somewhere along here is going to be where the lead board will go down, but it's outside the boat. And that's, of course, only used when you're sailing. And it depends on what point of sail you're on, whether you even use them or not. I would love to not even have to use them, but I surely will in certain conditions. On every ship you'll find today, you see the big bulb as well that comes out. Well, on the Melekai, years after it was built, I incorporated them into the design when I was in New Zealand. And I got 18% more speed out of the boat, just from adding bulbous bowels. It was phenomenal. Yeah. So it does make a huge difference in speed, and then that means in fuel efficiency, of course. So the, and on this boat that's meant to be banging around, the mini bulbous bowels serves to protect the hull and impact when you beach at speed. Well, you have to beach at speed, it's just fine. With the Melekai, I used to charter. And you got charter guests on board. And here's a little sandbar. And you go full speed, like 15 knots. And then you go, ah! And the boat goes right up on the sandbar. Yeah, it's fine. And if you're not a sailor, you're kind of like surprise and gulp. But if you're a real bona fide sailor, you go, no! Don't do it! Anyway, I like to have fun. Hydrodynamically, the bulbous bowel down in most ships sort of drills a hole in the water with a hole to pass through, helping out with the phenomena called laminar flow, which concerns friction and drag. The water tries to hold your bubble. And if you can make bubbles, let's say, do on ice breakers, or somehow, magically, this bulbous bow and ice a drill is a hole through the water, because that's the way I can think of it. But what I do know is it makes a huge difference. And the other thing I love about the concept is that both the bulbous bow and you've seen it on the Marius Cup racers in all boats built, probably in the last 10 years. The bow is not curved. It's either straight or reverse shear, it's called. Reverse shear and bulbous bow was developed centuries ago in Indonesia and still exists on some native craft today. Some of you will know Nathaniel Hirschhoff, which is America's greatest yacht designer. He experimented with these ideas over 100 years ago. He was very creative. And Irving Johnson of the famous Scooter Yankee in the 20s sailing around the world in proper yacht form with the fastest boat from the East Coast. And when he got to Indonesia, the local canoes just passed him up like it was in a spill. And that's 20 plus knots. So I like it when I find these little tidbits of interesting design features that they were done by the locals hundreds of years ago before we had our MIT. OK, notice the shape of the shear and the stern similar to fast-raising designs of the day. This shape, the stern, is the latest. And it's flat because you plane out. It's a load of the water for many reasons today, but other reasons for this boat. And then the shear, which is this line, this shape would look like last year's round-the-world razors. I figured I couldn't go wrong if I at least tried to a little bit mimic that. But it all makes sense in the light of what I'm doing. And then when I added the catamaran heels on, I ruined the whole thing, actually. But it's part of the theme of sled design. So it's kind of necessary. As an ocean workboat, sometimes you need to be on schedule. I hope to do some research, which you've got to be on time and do your project. So this boat hopefully will plane out at about 20 knots under power. When I say motor sail, when you've got to get somewhere, sometimes sailing in light winds is not enough or enough speed. So you add a little engine to that. And that's what you call motor sailing. I crossed the Indian Ocean with Amalekai on 100 gallons of fuel burning a third gallon an hour in motor sailing. It was hardly any wind. It was in monsoons. But I went enormous distance in motor sailing on light winds. And on this boat, I made a little chart here to give you an idea. The mast is not shown here yet. And the mast is short for this boat. So it will never be a very decent sailor, probably. But with the short mast in, say, 15-hour winds, you might expect six knots of speed. That's 144 nautical miles a day. The boat has a 60-horse and a 9.9. So when the wind is light, full sails, and then you want to go faster, it's efficient and cheap to run the 9.9, so you can add that. And then you may get 10 knots. That's 240 miles a day. And then, and that's motor sailing. And then if that's not enough, you can crank up the 60-horse and go half throttle and probably make 15 knots, or 360 miles a day. Let's say a day. That's 24 hours. Sails down, and then heavy weather, mast down. I expect about the motor out at 20 knots, which is 480 miles a day. Now we're getting somewhere. I plan to carry 150 gallons. And at 20 knots, I'll be burning about 4.5 gallons an hour, which gives a total range of 660 nautical miles, which will allow me to island-hop around the world in the Army. And from Lake Champlain to Norway, New Brahma. Island hopping, the distances are all under 660 miles. So hopefully there's a fill-up place, but there is. This is just an overgrown skiff, which you can see now. We turn it right side up, and it makes sense. And it shows you how extreme that is for climbing up on, say, an ice shelf. After all the work on paper and pencil designing, the thing changed a little bit as I was building. And what I noticed is, if I just cut the battle off here at 26 feet, I have a bigger boat. I mean, 26 feet is a small boat you need as much as you can get. So the battle cut off here allows the dimensions to be 26 feet, as measured by the Coast Guard. They don't count anything that comes beyond here or anything beyond the motor. And there's two feet beyond them. And the stern is two more feet behind the motor. And there's another, what, 2 and 1 half feet of bow spread here. So basically, overall, it's 31 feet, but it's registered 26 feet, and that's proper legal. I'll point out here as well, this is what I call ice skimmer. This is the strongest part of the outside of the hulls. And that's where you'll be pushing ice away from the boat. When it gets down to it, I may take a weekend off and add more plywood strips for the ice. I'll wait for that, because that'll make it heavier. This is the waterline. And the depth from the waterline to the bottom of the boat is 18 inches. So that's relatively shallow, and it means you can do all kind of things on the shallow water. It also means in typical anchorages, you can go where nobody else goes and get your own quiet spot. This sled has two rudders, which are adjustable up and down and two knee boards, all which kick up if reaching at speed. In case of damage, these are all interchangeable and are the same size, 8 feet by 1 foot. It's not an accident that the plywood comes to 4 feet. My calculator. And those rudders and knee boards, they're hollow and watertight, which means they flow and can be used for other purposes as well. Gangplank, surveying, those kind of things that are fine. This is the front third of the boat, pulling by eye comes into play, where I test the limits of how much wood can be bent without breaking in order to make the desired curves. Boat building is an art as well as a science. And like in all construction, it falls on the builder to correct the mistakes of the designer. When one, and I build a construction a lot, and I know this big time, you're working on plans building a billion, it comes like this, and you got to correct it. So the best designers and architects can really move up sometimes. And so when one is both builder and designer as well as financier, one has a lot of freedom to experiment with different shapes. And that's where the fun comes in. This also, another aspect of bending wood, on the turn of the boat over, it's like barn. That thing looks kind of like that. So I had to come along, it was like a winch, and had to pull this over a few inches to straighten her up from getting warped for too much damage. For many builders, that would be a total catastrophe. For me, it's just part of the day as well. Oh yeah, the forward rail, that's this, I call the forward rail, or stand, helps to stabilize oneself when jumping waves at speed and when harpooning large catch. One can also steer the boat from this position if you're alone. And the arctic, much catch, called country food, is harpooned or shot from the bow. The A-frame mast, not shown here, has a lookout station 20 feet above the water to spot the catch. In this way, three people can manage the hunt. One to drive, one to look out, and one at the forward stand. And that's just a nice place to be so many times. And when you get old with shaking legs like me, that thing is really nice to hold on to. And it's also a big safety feature for anybody that's up there. So I like safety above what looks or is considered correct. Standing room below, as well as within the cockpit, is helpful. The stern work area, which is half covered. So this is the stern work area. It comes out 10 and a half feet. And it's 8 and a half feet wide. And it's half covered. Now there's a big window here on your side. So this piece can come out. And so you can sit here, put your feet down there, and see how it went down. This is where I will probably sleep often if the weather is permitting. I like being outside. But I can be outside, but half inside. And in my, we'll call it, super-sneaking mad tent, I can be out there pretty mad weather. Well, my guests are comfortably inside. And I don't have to listen to them. The galley, which is like the kitchen, right? Inside has two six-foot long, I thought, work counters. Because it's not just like the kitchen counter. It serves many purposes. And the chart table, when you're doing research, you can actually sleep on them, if need be. So it's kind of basic, the inside. In fact, it's real basic. And those tables and the shelves underneath, which you can sleep there too, and the shelves above all of that, I can take out in about three hours. It's all not permanently fixed. It can change for whatever purpose you're using the boat for on that excursion. So anyway, the interior is probably more like your hunting cabin in the forest than it is like a fancy kitchen. Forward is a Hawaiian bed, which in Hawaii, they're usually about 8 by 8. And that's where the whole family crashes. And where, yeah, a Hawaiian bed, big, comfortable place. So for a 26-foot boat that has an 8-foot wide by 7-foot long, bed is very unusual. And so easily two people will sleep very comfortable. If they've got kids, you can throw a couple more kids in there. If they're backpackers, you can pack them in there. I don't know how many. And you can double it. So there's plenty of room for sleeping in a camp-out style. The exterior has wrap-around windows under the cockpit floor. Here, under here, is generator batteries. And then on this side here, there's a four and a half cubic foot ice maker. So the deal is, your solar panels charge the batteries. Your batteries run the ice maker. Then you take a block of ice and you put it in your refrigerator that's inside in the kitchen or in the galley. That will last four days easy. And the drawbex, four days probably, in colder places even longer. So I saw water, right? No, fresh water, yeah. Yeah, to make the ice fresh water. Which, can we go to the whole boat again? Yeah. Yeah. I'm not a guy, the whole cabin, 18 by 16 feet was a rain catcher. So I would go six months without ever needing water. When the rain hits the sails in the Trumpets, you've got swallows all the time. You've got really a cabin on it. And the rain hits the sails. You let it rain a little bit to wash this all off. And then the rain comes onto the cabin top. And all around the cabin top is a hand rail gutter combination. So obviously it's so pointy to see it. But it took Leonardo da Vinci to do that, to design my first boat, the halodile. And I sort of picked up on that idea because the cabin top, this is a rail that you can hold on to. And there's nothing upstarking that. It also means that when it rains, you catch the water. It all comes down to here. And then it goes into five gallon jewellery trucks. So you can catch your own water and sea. And while we've got the picture, I'll mention too that for safety purposes, this is a line that you can hold onto when you're standing up there. It's pretty precarious. This is a line that you hook to when you're walking. In other words, when you come on board, I'm going to hand you a safety line and show you how to make a harness and show you a boat on how to tie the clip on it. And you've got to make that. And you're not allowed outside of here unless you're clipped on. When you're clipped on, then you can go forward and you can get on the boat up on the cabin top up here. You can actually step on this and step up to the cabin top. You can do all kind of antics. But if you fall over, you're just going to get dragged along until somebody hears your scream. And I made six kids aboard. And I am hugely a fan of safety. So this is a fixed rail, which you normally don't get on the regular sailboats. And you can stand on it. It's very strong. It's going to keep you from falling over. And it goes all the way around from here, which I consider a good safety feature. What type of wind did you use for the wheel? The same thing, spruce. Yeah. There was only a couple of places which I used fur as timber. The bow is really being stronger than everything else. And then I believe in the bottom of the center keel. But the fur as a timber is a very traditional and very good boat-building material. It's stronger and way heavier than spruce. Because I want the whole boat line, I just use spruce and sacrifice string for lightness. This also shows latching. This rudder has a bend here. And this is a rudder case, I call it. By the way, this is the only one that's ever been done like this. And we'll see how it all works out in the long run. So far, so good, though. So this case is lashed onto this two-light-four bees. The rudder slides up and down in this case, depending on how deep you want it to be for whatever you're doing. And it's pinned here and just has a light line here holding it in. So if you hit some, it just kicks up. And then the lead boards will be lashed somewhere along to here. And when I finally find the right position, then I'm going to get more substantial of how to hold it in this day. This is a work table, which is the best part of the whole boat. Here you've got a 60 horse and a 9.9. Here is where you stand to steer. And the engines are there. And a table this way is above the engines, which you can clean, fish on, make barbecue, make picnic, do what you want. Big work table. That is so cool. And you don't need to get that on the 60 foot. It's like, yes. This is the stand that holds the solar panels. This is just a few before. And just to make it look smart, I've stained it. And that is the boom that connects here. And you use it to lift heavy objects, like disc traps or whatever, or the dingy, anything heavy. I'm tired of lifting heavy stuff. So I like to have other weights that are mechanical. And here is a two ton bench. The electric pulls 4,700 pounds. And that can lift the whole boat straight up. I don't want to ever do that, but it's capable of it. And that winch means you can lift anchors when they're stuck. You can pull big objects on board. You can raise and lower the mast. And that's really helpful. And then, there are no winches. It is hard, except for the bolts and screws and, say, stainless steel nails. All the typical yaw wringing is lashed, saving me the cost of the whole boat. I bought from a fishing supply store in Louisiana, a 600 foot roll of 1 1⁄2 inch, that kind of red line. So it's really great to have a blind that you can just do whatever you want, and things as you go. And that same line is good for anchoring. I've gotten like 1,000 feet of line for anchoring if I need to. It's a little crazy for normal purposes, but if you're doing recent, sometimes you've got to do strange things. And then I bought another roll of 1⁄4 inch, which I used for lashing. So I think those two rolls cost about $500. And I made it about $10,000 worth of gear with that. Had I bought it from the hardware store. So yeah. Can we read the Seven Days article? Yeah. This was the Kencom, Ken Picard? No, it's him. Anyway, he's a good writer. He wrote this about the boat and the story of the boat. And he said it very nicely there, where he said on board. It's as a winch that makes it possible for the vessel to be hauled out of the water and then dragged across the ice on its catamaran hulls like a sled and pulled by a dog team or snowmobile. A sled dog went well fed. And that's sometimes an issue nowadays with, I mean, they're almost dogs. It's a big issue in the north. And I already was saddened with the dogs. The climate's changing, and it's not good for the outdoors. And good for being able to feed them well. So snowboards are kind of taking over. But a sled dog can pull 100 pounds all day long. If he's well fed. So if a dog team was roughly 10 to 12 dogs like that, depending, but with three or four dog teams, you could really pull this boat across the ice. And that's why it needs to be light. Snowmobiles nowadays, in the last five years, since I started working on this. Wow, you can get anything you want. Any size, big, small, there's a lot of different choice out there for snowmobiles. OK, the Burlington Free Press. Emily, no. Anyway, they're Burlington Navy. It wasn't a good weather for that coming here. Emily is a writer for the Burlington Free Press. And she's a very experienced sailor, journalist, a blogger, and she wrote this article about the boat. What fun to be at the Burlington Waterfront. Having been in many ports around the world, Burlington Waterfront is really second to none. As a sailor, my perspective is from the anchorage, where in the Burlington Harbor, where I'm anchored, to the south, there's beaches and thousands of birds. I'm a bird person. Flying all around, I do the name of some of them. And they're around the boat, they're over the boat. And of course, as winter moves on, they all leave. Most all leave. So there's the beaches and the birds to the south. And then there's the railroad bridge with all the busy sounds of trains that I ride. And from that perspective, due east is the bicycle path with all kind of people out there no matter what the weather. Then just by the dinghy dog is a kid's playground, a very special place that I enjoy just watching the kids on the playground. For me, that's good stuff. And then across the grassy green part of Perkinspear is the lowest McClure, a full-sized replica of an 1862 glass sailing canal boat from the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum. And then there is a marina and a seafood restaurant, then ferries, then more marinas and restaurants, then the Coast Guard, the US Coast Guard. And in the summer, this is the behind of neat activity. The rowing boats, the stiffening going on, everybody happy together. And I very much enjoyed that experience. And then when October comes, all the sailboats leave. Everything shuts down and packs up. And I'm alone testing Leonard with the whole place of myself, good fun. Yeah. In late December of 2016, with sub-zero temperatures, the boat draped in icicles. That's not cool. And Galefors wins with six-foot waves. I needed to rethink the situation. Many locals were advising that it would be best if the boat was hauled out. My son is still around the world for me, and lives here in Vermont and brought me here to Vermont. Because it's something my dad eat, and we don't do this in Vermont. So I learned the hard way to listen to the locals. And so here, tail hook trucking on a moment's notice, beyond the call of duty, sent a truck down to pull me out of the water. And Frosty, the driver, I don't think that's him. I think he's back here. But Frosty, the driver, acted like he just does this every day. He was so cool. He was so good. And usually, they wouldn't nobody would do this. But they've been over backwards for me, and I highly appreciate that. And all the good hospitality that I experienced down in the waterfront. And I must say that in my whole experience there, the best virtues of tolerance for hunters which showed me authorities never became cross or angry and had every wrong to. Because it's staying there during the winter. I'm possibly creating a situation that's going to be bad for everybody. And I began to realize that and respect how they wouldn't tell me to leave. They very nicely just said, you better think about it. And that was very much appreciated. But I never got a bad face or a discouraging word. The whole time I was down there from everybody, and including the authorities. Why didn't you just drive the boat up on the ice? Well, that was the experiment. But I chickened out. Yeah, I couldn't do that experiment a little bit later. You're going to build an ice spring somewhere. Anyway, I'll figure that out. I tell you the truth. I can't say, but I really don't think it's going to freeze over. And maybe there could be some patches of ice that would work for the experiment. But you know, sleeping on the boat in blood zero, that's not so fun and cozy as it might seem, either. No. Anyway, I come from Hawaii. It was too much. Anyway, I finally chickened out. And then I can't let them know of their article. Oh, yeah, Ken said, old man calls it quits or something like that. No, not really. Well, you know, my intentions were to stay in the Willigall winter, but I didn't quite make it. Homeport sled was built at the Slayton farm on the banks of the Dog River in West Berlin where she has her present home, where she is right now. And that's Gail's farm. OK, here. Oh, and I mentioned that Gail and I, I worked on her farm and we just became good friends and had a lot of things going together on the farm. But we were kind of together with all the other people during the effects of hurricane Irene. Our farmhouse was in the middle of a lake, 12 feet deep. And it was bad. The Dog River overflowed by 12 feet. So it took a couple of years to sort of rebound from that. And that was, I was going to build a boat that summer. So it was like delaying the project a couple of years. Nice to build it. So OK, this figure here, that's Ku, the Polynesian god of war and pacifists. But I'm beginning to change my mouth on bad days with news. And also the god of strength and health. This was carved for me 40 years ago by a Tongan friend named David in the island of Vavao in Tonga in the South Pacific. I carried this figure head around with me for four decades looking for the right boat to put it on. I learned a whole lot from many people of the Pacific Ocean. Some who I worked with and shared lives with have now had to move the whole population off the islands of many islands that I used to work and fish and do different things on. So that kind of brings it home to me how serious the rising seas are becoming. The sled was envisioned in response to climate change. As a sailor who has fished all oceans of the world, I'm keenly aware of the drastic changes going on in weather patterns everywhere. Trends in weather add up to trends in climate. The greenhouse effect from CO2 and other gases in the atmosphere is heating up the oceans, which contain 90% or so of the heat of the planet where land masses are relatively insignificant in the big scheme of things and are totally at the mercy of the seas for their weather. Climate models have often been unreliable in their predictions like way unreliable. Like things are happening now. They were to happen 100 years from now. We blew it as far as our ability to predict. Climate models have been unreliable in their predictions and in a real sense today is already what we have been considering the future. Beyond heat waves, forest fires, droughts, floods, disrupted agriculture on land and decline in fisheries, I'll just mention briefly three areas that are especially concerning to me as a seaman. Hurricanes, acidification, and climate refugees, big one. Having been in or miserably close to a dozen or so hurricanes over time, I learned that it only takes one degree above 81 degrees Fahrenheit to muster up a hurricane. Also, water freezes or melts right at 32 degrees, which means Fahrenheit, of course, which means there is very little give and take when it comes to temperature rise and the enormous consequences. And we hear all the talk about 1.5 or 2 degrees that we might allow the temperature to rise, which we've already gone 1.2 of those degrees. It only takes one degree to make a huge difference in so many ways. Last December, for the first time I recorded history, completely out of season, we had a hurricane in the North Atlantic, sending 50-foot waves up into the Norwegian Sea and up into the Arctic, breaking up the ice that was trying to form. This is unheard of. And for the first time ever, last season, there were three hurricanes at once threatening the United States. That's the first time. It's usually one at a time. We now have unusually warm water from both the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean, and the rivers of Alaska, like the McKinsey, and the rivers of Siberia, which is even way more warm water. This water from the Pacific Ocean to the Bering Strait and from the North Atlantic going up to the Arctic on the east side of Greenland and on the west side of Greenland. But this warm water is going under the North Pole and melding it from underneath to the point that in the next couple of years, probably, we're not going to have an ice over the North Pole. The Arctic Ocean has lost three quarters of its ice already. And even last December, satellite pictures showed open water within 100 miles, more or less, of the North Pole. This past December, there were several days when Montpelier was colder than the above freezing temperatures at the North Pole. Like, when I held out, it was below zero here. It was above 32 at the North Pole. This is heavy duty. In the last couple of years, I've actually done a study checking the temperatures and climate around the Arctic. And often, Montpelier was colder than Moscow, colder than Stockholm, where I used to live, colder than the Therabanks where I used to live. It's really warming up in the Arctic. I'll just add here that the Arctic controls the weather of the world by the jet stream in the atmosphere and by the gold stream in the water. That's a big and long discussion, but both systems are going out of whack. Acidification of the world's oceans is due to the ocean's inability to balance the overabundance of CO2 without fossil fuel and modern industrialization. The oceans are able to balance the CO2, but not with the human contribution. So it's sort of like acid rain in the air, just to try to make some kind of a comparison. The results of acidification of the ocean is that zooplankton, crustaceans, the foundation of the food chain, shellfish, and coral reefs are no longer able to survive. I'm a diver. I've done underwater archeology and many things. And the coral reefs all over the whole world are really losing it. And they call it whiting when the acid is so strong that it bleaches out the coral reefs. And that's happening everywhere. I used to dive in the Great Barrier Reef and there's 1,200 miles of white coral there. It's unbelievable. So we're going to take this stuff serious. And then the third thing is the climate refugees, which is another human dilemma, resulting from both political and climate-related problems. Those are interrelated as well. There are literally millions of people today moving away from coastlines to higher ground. We here in Vermont got to think, I believe, that as the sea rises on the East Coast, New Jersey now, there's places where it's 18 inches above normal, 18 inches. It's a lot. Add a storm to that. And I died. And we're going to have another sandy, only worse. And it's not going to be that long before people start trickling into the most beautiful safe place in the United States, called the Green Mountains. There's a lot of good films on the Arctic. This one was done seven years ago. And in the last seven years, unbelievable how much it's changed from that. But I recommend this. It's done by Inuits with English subtitles, but it's the wisdom of people that really know what you're talking about. So I recommend that film as well as others. Yeah, let's go for questions then. What kind of sail does that have? The slag. Yeah, four gypses. Yeah, depends on when and what. There isn't a typical main, so that. There's a gable coming down here that is the fourth gym. And then the mast is stacked way up in comparison to normal. But so is the latest 100-foot racing carbon fiber yacht from Australia. Somehow discovered that position was pretty good for them. You've nothing to do with this, but yeah. Four gypses and a spinnaker, and these cells are so cheap, 100 bucks a piece, come on. If you don't like that one, you buy the next one. Pretty good shape for new sails. So that's my budget, new sails. Is that what you meant? Yeah. The wrapper on the windows, are you using glass or plexi? Yes. Quarterish tinted plexiglass. Or just pick stuff. Yeah. Yeah. So what are you going to take this up into the Arctic? If this summer, maybe, I'm not sure. I'm not sure. It's like one step at a time. This summer was a good part of time. You wouldn't water research in the lake, and exploring the lake and enjoying the lake. And then, the Arctic is August, September, and maybe nowadays in October. So you've got the first half of the summer to enjoy here. And then, before the end, go to the Arctic. I may just make a run up and come back. I don't feel like I'm going to be comfortable spending the winter there, unless I've got a bona fide job with an apartment. But I don't think I'm going to live on a boat all very long in the Arctic. And, yeah. Steve, would you have heat on board? Yes. Yeah, heat is, I have electric, ceramic, three little heaters like that. So the solar panel charges the battery. The battery runs the ceramic heaters. But the best of all is the propane. What are they calling it? It's meant for outdoors. I got it at the hardware store. Salamander. It's that big with a reflector. And it puts out the heat big time. So you just turn it on. And when your hands are turning blue and fall out, it only takes five minutes. The boat's disgustingly hot. So it's not something you, it's not exactly the right size because you can't leave it on. So it's kind of an on and off thing, but it surely gets warm. And then cooking is propane. And that cooking is also heat. And then I have electric cooking, which is also heat. So talking about cooking and all the things like that, you're going to ask a question I said I wouldn't ask. No. What about the bathroom? No, I'm not going to answer that. No, I'm a pacifist, and he's a morse. Yeah, OK, I'll answer that seriously because that's actually everybody's question. What about in curtain? You've got to like the people you're with on board. Yeah, I'm not a morse. I've seen up issues in the North and even in the summertime. So that if you needed to pull a pin to drop the ground of the scavenger, that might be iced up and you couldn't free it. Yeah, that's always possible for sure. Even in that time, you'd have to get it. But say when it needs a kick up is when you hit something. So if you hit something, even if it's kind of frozen in, well, let's see what happens. I'll tell you, though, I already that maybe four knots hit a rock in the lake where on one side the leadboard and the rudder just stopped the boat. So I was happy to see glashing why I like it, as it gives. And if it were stainless steel bent, it would break. So that's why I prefer latching up in certain places beyond the expense part. But yeah, kicking up, well, I haven't done that yet. I had a run-up on the beach at speed to prove that point, but it's yet to be seen. Any question to your water catchment system? Yes. Because you have the catchment hole in the very front of the boat. Well, how do you prevent that all the saltwater waves come in, too? Oh, you only do that when it's raining and when it's You're not cold. Yeah, and you wouldn't even do that, say, in bad weather when there's saltwater, you know, splashing all over the boat, that kind of thing. And actually, from here going north, there's lots of water. I mean, you're not going to run out of fresh water. Have you done any testing with the full three gypsum and spinnaker? I mean, I can't imagine when you say that. How does that, do you have any pictures? I mean, I thought I'd like some. So nobody took any pictures of them? No, they're too busy. Sorry? I'm a cameraman for my job, but I don't do that on my own stuff. But when you're motor sailing, do you run only before the wind? Do you heal? I mean, how do you do that? Yeah. Motor sailing is actually better on the wind. Well, if a wind is less effective. Yeah, that makes sense. You can't have a motor sailing attack at the same time, can you? Yeah. You can't? Yeah. That's easy. I see it's very easy, because the motor can do no. With those heels, do you heal? And how far, how close to the wind do you attack? Around about 45 degrees roughly. Yeah. This isn't high performance, like 30 degrees on the wind. It's only 45. But to tell you the truth, my style of sailing is comfort. That comfort is the name of the game, both for the people on board and the boat. So like on my camera, I would sail 50 degrees off the wind, and I would outrun at the end of the race modern boats that were doing 30 degrees. Because they're going, how do we say this? OK, here comes the wind. In your sailing, say 30 degrees off the wind. And in my cat, I'm sailing 50 degrees off the wind. But the cat, because of its asymmetric holes, and this wind as well, tracks wonderfully. So instead of the boat is going 30 degrees into the wind, it's going like this. In other words, it's stepping sideways, even though the compass says it's 30 degrees into the wind across the bottom of the ocean. It's not. And so with me, 50 degrees off the wind, I'm going way faster, and I'm going true. So I beat them every time. And you're healing so that the outer keel is completely out of the water? No. I hope not. I don't want that. That's a lot of despair. What about the dagger boards that you were talking about? I mean, the dagger boards that you were talking about. Are those in the water? Yeah. Are those between the keels? No, they're outside. On the outside of the board. On the outside of the board, I'm sorry. They're probably outside, yeah. Yeah? Part of that. I don't want to have to use those. I only will use them when it's light winds, and I rammed out a gas, or something like that. Fun. Yeah. They're too clumsy and just another thing to do. Amazing. I wish you could get somebody to take some video. Yeah, we will. We will, yeah. So I'm trying to picture this. You're under sail with three gyms, and I'm sitting here. Strennaker, you've got three motors in the water. You've got a leadboard. They're not in the water, they come out of the water. The props come out of the water. OK, but you've got your leadboard. And you're trying to get up on the ice in an emergency. How does that all work? Wildly. One person at the helm. I don't want to give away my dream trick this summer when I get in the first yacht race, where they all allow me. Where, see, the engine is actually covered with a soundproof called bag. I hate the sounds of engines, so I want to make it as quiet as I can. And that's under this table. You can't see them. So when I enter the race, you don't see those engines. And I've got it all planned out. I'm going to hang loose at the back toward the end of the race. But I've got to be far enough to can't hear. But for some reason, this whole place is going to pass up to hopefully. And then I'm going to full sail. Make sure I keep my sails full, so I don't see our G. And then just as we're running across the face line, I'm going to lose control and go up on the beast full speed and release that mass full sail. You can do this. So when I enter the beach, the mass will collapse with all the sails up. I can see the evolution of that. That we're going to put on film. Another question. I can't really figure out how you can go with the Egypt and the Speniger as a lot of power in the sails. And you have so little weight and boat in the water. OK. The mass is only 24 feet high. And we'll just call it on a 30-foot boat. So that's very low mass. The sails are really kind of small for the boat. And they're more for stabilizing. Yeah. So you see, I kind of figured I would never have a good fast sailing boat. So don't even try to go there, which means don't have a big, tall mass and a lot of sail power. So with three 100-foot square foot jibs, it's a 300 square foot of three jibs. Had another one. Then it's 400. And well, the Speniger's like 200 square feet. You put everything in just the right condition. You might go along pretty good. Wonder also how stable is this boat if you have a lot of weights? OK. Very. Those catamaran, we'll call additions, make it hugely stable. So you can get four or five people to get up on the edge of the boat, and it's not dead. Where if you didn't have those catamaran sections under there. Yeah, they're very deep, right? They're 80 inches. Yeah, it's not much. Yeah, no. No, but it makes the boat very stable as far as this way. And then when you're going through the waves, it's hugely comfortable. What do you have on this boat? You're going to have this open invitation next spring for all people in the boat. Yes, I need people. Great. Yes. And some nice banners around the boat. Yeah. For all the issues we have to be concerned about them. I'll paint your banners. OK. Yes. Just be aware. I was in the Lancaster Sound between Greenland and Bath & Isle in June, and sailing. And I had on two wicker hats, two parkas, a woolen undergarments, two pairs of arctic pants, two pairs of woolen socks, two bins. I've never been as cold in my life. Yeah, and you're coming from Vermont. I'm not strong going up there. You're aware. Well, yeah, when all said and done, there's these airplanes and stops. What's going to happen is at some point I'm going to be introducing this thing to the government in both Nunavut and Greenland just to see their feedback. And if they think from the information I can provide that they might be interested, then I'll take the boat there in the sun. But not in the winter. Hey, thank you. I'm sailing. Definitely. Thank you.