This is Peanut, my new 20′ Cruising Pedal boat!
I don’t know much about the history of *this* boat, but the first one built to this same design, “Blue Skies”, did some serious Voyaging. The designer, Paul Gartside, says:
Bill Hayward built his “Blue Skies” from this plan and took her 7000 Miles from the Milk River in Alberta to the Missouri, and down the Mississippi. He pedaled along the Gulf coast to Florida and up the Intracoastal Waterway to New York, then on up the Hudson River to the St. Lawrence. He eventually ended his journey in Halifax, Nova Scotia, after travelling for eighteen months.
Bill Hayward, and the original pedal boat “Blue Skies” route from Alberta to Nova Scotia
Bill Hayward was interviewed about his trip in 1997 by WaveLength paddling magazine and the old article can still be found on the wayback machine here: https://web.archive.org/web/20010414050800/https://www.wavelengthmagazine.com/1997/on97blueskies.html
It’s got some fascinating details about his route and the boat.
So, little “Peanut” has quite the potential, it seems, for some long distance cruising!
She’s 20′ overall, draws about 9″ of water with her drop-down skeg pulled up and over a foot with it down and the propeller in clean water.
She’s got a daggerboard in a slot to steady the boat in big open water crossings, and backup oars as propulsion if the pedal drive has any issues. The rudder also pulls completely out of the water for shallow landings.
The sleeping cabin includes a few small shelves and 6’6″ of room to stretch out. Two watertight bulkheads fore and aft ensure flotation in case of a capsize, although the conditions required to capsize seem pretty high. A suprisngly large pop-up dodger shields the companionway from rain at anchor (although the original had a tent, apparently, which I may try to replicate for the wetter PNW conditions)
When she arrived in the small shed behind my workplace though, she had the start of an electric drive added and quite a few issues.
The first step was to remove the electric drive and start to piece together the pedal drive parts that had arrived in a box along with the boat. An initial covert test pedal at night had revealed that the old white bearing housings were weak and immediately broke when you really “sent it” on the pedals.
The original Laminated plywood propeller was also mismatched to the boat: with the 6-1 bevel gear, the resistance was too high for efficient or comfortable pedaling. So, a 5$ torquedo propeller from Marine Thrift was the first option to try and get a better feel from the system. The cockpit wood is either epoxy covered or just bare and will need paint almost immediately to prevent any issues
A second test pedal, this time in the day, was amazing but still uncovered a few more issues. The original, “overpropped” wood propeller was too large/steep but had given us some good bits of speed, 3-3.5 knots, while the new torquedo prop was only producing a consistent 2, albeit at a very relaxed pace. You could speed up your pedaling cadence past the point of comfort and still get 3.5+ knots out of her, which is a good sign. I’ve ordered a 2-blade, high aspect ratio human power specific prop and hope to have that on and testable soon. The gearbox also had the drive gears realigned to combat a skipping issue and some thrust bearings added.
She’s comfy under pedal and with the daggerboard down in it’s case took even a fairly close nearby ferry wake with 0 issues at all.
Next up? A proper seating arrangement, painting the bare wood inside the cockpit, some structural upgrades and waterproofing to the daggerboard case, and of course attaching the new high aspect ratio 2-blade prop when it arrives.
I spent a night retrofitting the original “Flinstones” launching dolly by removing the bare wood wheels in favour of a proper axle and pneumatic tires, together with some other salvaged parts. She’s a lot easier to move out of the storage “garage” now, and an easy to use boat gets used often!
Keep an eye on this website for more info on Peanut repairs, changes, and maybe even adventures!