Island Escape: Entry #7: John Epping

Another Island Escape Contest Entry

First things first, part of the Garfield phone is your rocking bowsprit. Why? The overall design goals are don’t die and have fun.  The Garfield bowsprit is a banging start to the fun goal and your overall planning. 

For tools, you have a Leatherman, cigarette lighters, and broken bottle glass. You need more. Rocks can become hammers and driftwood can become tool handles.  Sharpen some of the metal into axe heads, choppers, machete blades and maybe splitting wedges on the convenient granite rocks.  

Use a tool to get your fill of coconut water and meat. Make a sun hat from the clothing and fabric and look for a large diameter cedar or fir log of suitable length to use fire, wedges, and adzes to carve a dugout canoe. After not finding this, cross sharpening wedges off your to do list. 

Now you face a major design choice, in or on. Can you build something watertight enough to be in?  Some sort of plastic tarp skin on frame is your only realistic option.  If the tarp is your skin, it cannot be your sail. Will it really stay watertight for 200 miles? Given the whole recent shipwreck thing, you may be pessimistic.

You chose a craft to be on. One massive challenge is keeping your craft structurally sound enough during your voyage. Your available resources include a severe lack of nails. Maybe you can make some rudimentary nails from the metal, but cordage is what you must rely upon. You have 100 feet of rope. You can stretch this by using individual strands for less demanding purposes. Additionally, you have a belt, shoelaces, phone cords, and can cut strips of netting or tarp. You also have that jute growing on the island to make artisanal biodegradable cordage of uncertain quality.   

Gaze with new appreciation at your pallet. It is structurally sound, floats, has numerous attachment points, and is the core of your craft. 

Your craft’s structure will have horizontal layers of strong, flexible, floaty bamboo and suitable wood ultimately attached to the pallet. The overall length is 20 feet. A Spanish windlass will draw together the bamboo and structural driftwood at each end. The middle layers will have voids to make room for the buoyant debris like the Styrofoam. These will be evenly balanced as far forward and aft as possible.   

Periodically place smaller right angle and vertical bamboo for additional support.  Wrap and fasten the netting around the central part for additional integrity. Place bamboo rails about a foot high in the center. Use lots of bamboo in case of miscalculations, or future partial structural failures. The depth will be three or four feet-ish exactly.

Another design choice is whether to have outriggers The logical attachment points for the crossarms would be the pallet’s front and rear. But then you cannot row. If the sailing fails, would you rather have to paddle and have outriggers and their stability, or would you rather row and have no outriggers and less stability?

Remembering the not-die goal, you chose outriggers. The crossarms will be 14-foot bundles of bamboo lashed to the fore and aft of the pallet. Each outrigger will be double ended, all bamboo and one foot wide by two foot deep. The short distance between crossarms limits their length to 9 feet. X-shaped diagonal bamboo bracing will strengthen the outriggers.

The paddles will either be made from the wood or be bamboo poles with a shoe or boot attached at the end. Spare paddles will be taken.    

The sails are low-aspect, minimize structural strains and maximize flexibility. Two rectangular sails 10 foot wide will be cut from the tarp and each cut end then rolled around and attached to a 10-foot-long top spar. The sail edges will be the reinforced tarp edges. Sail areas will be 50 and 20 square feet. Your sail area can be 20, 50 or 70 square feet.

The mast goes through the hull layers and rises 12 feet above be the pallet’s forward port corner. The mast has strong spliced loops of rope 11 feet and 8 feet above the hull. A strong line will go three feet from the end of the top spar through a loop to the hull. The center of the sail area approximately equals the center of the craft. One or both sails will be raised depending on conditions. Ropes to each sail’s bottom corner grommets will control the sail. Spare top spars and masts will be taken. 

Fishing floats are attached to the mast top and where the crossarms attach to the port outrigger to reduce the chance of capsizing or turtling.

A daggerboard from wood or metal will be attached through the hull’s layers at the center of the starboard side of the pallet even with the center of the sail area. 

Your rudder looks like a long oar between vertical uprights at the pallet’s aft corners.  It’s constructed like the paddles. Spare rudders will be taken. Placing the mast and rudder on opposite corners gets you a little more leverage for the rudder.

Your voyage’s stretch goal is one mile per hour or roughly eight days.  You plan on 20 days, will take 25 gallons of water weighing 200 pounds in sealed bottles and containers lashed where most helpful.  After the water is used, the containers will be kept for additional flotation or future rain gathering.  Dried fruit and coconut meat will be taken for food. 

Sun and weather exposure will be reduced getting under unused sails or a rough cover you made of roughly sewn together clothing and fabric.  The rubber ducky will be taken as a good luck charm.  You will need it. •SCA•