It is about 4 months from when Jack and I will be in the arctic looking to implement my plan and begin our studies of bears and the environment.
The plan is finished, or as finished, as it can be. The 3500 miles of Yukon and Mackenzie River will be a slog. The days on these rivers run together as we cruise them. Bad weather, cold and some snow will be seen. But we will also see some nice temps in july and august. August on the Yukon should be nice after the 2000 miles of the Arctic Ocean, Beaufort and Bering Seas. I am sure those places will rock our little world at times.
The 20 days or so that we spend on the ice in the Beaufort Sea should just be awesome. Lots of sporty conditions, polar bears, walrus’s and seal. This will be quite exciting. The days will pass quickly as we have lots of work to do. Lots of photography and data collection. Let alone staying alive. It will be cool.
Our boat has been designed and will be ready by early april. She has no name yet but her design is a catacanoe. What is a catacanoe? A catacanoe is two 16 foot canoes combined into one with aluminum tubing linking the boats together. One rod at the bow area plus 2 amidship will be the structure for our engine mount. the 15 horse motor will be attached between both boats on this platform. Why a catacanoe? Stability, payload and fuel consumption vs. speed. A single canoe is 36″, 2 are 72″ with some stability issues in oceans. Tethered she will be 8 feet wide. Wide enough to be very stable in te seas that we will attack.
Here payload should be about 1500 pounds. We plan on only having about 1000 pounds aboard at our heavy times. With a 15 hp motor we should get about 15 MPH or more from the boat with a moderate load. We will need speed to survive at times. Fuel consumption should be about 6 gallons per day for 100 miles of travel. That will get us to the limited fuel resupply points with a little to spare in our fuel stores.
I will talk a little about what we expect on the oceans in my next entry. Thanks for checking in. I will probably do a couple entries a week from now until I leave. Hope that you enjoy them and learn how difficult it is to plan one of these things.
Mingo