The Cordless Canoe Challenge

Last year a boat magazine got together with Makita and ran a race for cordless tool powered boats. I built a boat and entered, but my drive leg was damaged before the race by one of the spectators, stopping me from competing. This year I'm having another go, with a new boat. The boat I've chosen to build is a West Mersea Duck Punt. They were originally designed for commercial wildfowling in the Essex marshes here around 150 or more years ago, and carried a large bore duck gun on the foredeck. More recently they've been raced under sail for fun and it turns out that they are pretty efficient little boats, needing very little power to go at a fair lick.

The original boats were made from heavy planks, and even the modern versions are made from 9mm (~3/8") plywood, so they are heavy. Light is always good for a fast boat, so I decided to make a Duck Punt from foam composite. Being a cheapskate I decided to use cheap extruded polystyrene underfloor heating insulation for the core, covered either side with a layer of epoxy resin and glass cloth. The details of the build are on the Boat Design forum, here: http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/boat-design/duck-punt-twist-42466.html#post542515 . The power is supplied by a home made outboard drive leg and home made stainless propeller, driven by a cordless drill.

The race is this weekend, and I've just loaded the finished boat on to the trailer, ready for an early start in the morning. Here are some pictures:

Wow, looks very good! I've been thinking about a Cordless drill outboard for a while, I like yours, nicely made.

Wow
Amazing build Jeremy. The boat and drill powered outboard look incredible.
What is the length of the race and how many packs are you allowed.

mr.electric said:

Wow
Amazing build Jeremy. The boat and drill powered outboard look incredible.
What is the length of the race and how many packs are you allowed.

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Thanks for the kind words, folks, much appreciated.

The race is an out and back dog leg on a lake, so needs a mixture of good speed and manoeuvrability. Boats only take around 7 or 8 minutes or so to do the course. The trick is getting speed and a really tight turning circle, as the last buoy to be rounded is a 180 degree turn. Last year some of the faster canoes were running really wide at this turn, so lost time. The race is run as a knock out in heats, two boats at time. There's a video of last year's event here that gives a flavour of it, it's a pretty typically wacky British event: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t82OL0YObw4

You can use as many battery packs as you like, and as many cordless tools as you like, but the total cost of them must be less than £500 (around $760 or so). Changing batteries during the race is allowed, but takes up valuable time. You're not allowed to dismantle the cordless tools or hook up external batteries, the tools have to be used pretty much as they are. The Makita drill I'm using is an 18 V lithum one, with a 54 Wh battery pack. This should run the drill at full power for around 10 minutes or so, plenty of time to get around the course I hope.

I built a little boat a few years ago for the local fishing club to do maintainence around their lakes and for electro fishing to move fish from stock ponds. I used a flexidrive with a home made prop held in its chuck with a cordless drill powering it all held in place with a Manfrotto magic arm, it worked well, but not a patch on the quality of what you have done here Jeremy.
Good luck in the race, keep the boat away from the spectators this year!
Where is the race being held?

Thanks for the kind words.

The race is at the Beale Park Boat Show this weekend, next to the river Thames near Pangbourne.

Hope we get some video of the run! Good luck, and keep that drive system hidden from the spectators this year!

You need to practice your 12 cell "draw." (Old US west analogy to the 6 shooter drawing down on the bad guy.)

Very nice boat! Good luck in the race!

As always Jeremy, your work is incredible and inspirational.

If I could make a drill recommendation, I've really fallen in love with the power of this model:

http://www.dewalt.com/tools/cordless-drills-hammerdrills-dc901kl.aspx


It's a 73Wh pack, but no chance for overcharge (it uses A123 26650 M1 cells).

I would recommend doing a couple of tests to confirm no BMS shut-downs (or disable BMS) on your current drill pack so it can't shut down the party if you need to get a few more seconds of power out to win, but a cell drops below it's cut-off point.

Once the BMS is disabled, if you charge those LiMn cells with a power supply to 4.35-4.4v you can fit another 15-20% capacity in. It might make the difference between winning and DNF'ing.

Jeremy Harris said:

Thanks for the kind words.

The race is at the Beale Park Boat Show this weekend, next to the river Thames near Pangbourne.

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The video looked a lot of fun I hope you have nice sunny weather this weekend for this event !

Thanks again folks.

I'd love the the big DeWalt, but I'd already got the Makita, so have to run with it really (it helps that Makita are sponsors, too!). Last year everyone made it around the course, even those using budget drills, as it seems that cordless drills are designed to run for at least ten minutes or more at full power. The Makita I have has more power than I can comfortably use, as it will take the boat up to just above hull speed. None of the cordless drills available have enough power to get boats this size on to the plane, so it's really a matter of seeking advantage from better manoeuvrability and acceleration.

The weather was a pain today, and the show was postponed till tomorrow. The forecast for tomorrow looks reasonable (we had winds of up to 80 mph today.........) so I understand that the organisers are planning to compress all the heats into one day tomorrow.

I wish you the best of luck, and I pitty your opponents.

Keep us posted with results tomorrow!

now I know why boats and ships are referred to as "she"... what a beauty!

how bout air drills and a couple of air tanks? would pneumatic power qualify? Would air tanks be lighter than battery packs?

Boat looks great J, nifty little trailer too.

I skimmed the boat thread, but missed the boat's total weight. (?)

80mph winds... I hope the vessel was inside, or tied down.

Good luck!

Dee Jay said:

Would air tanks be lighter than battery packs?

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I doubt it--most pneumatic motors are not very efficient, so you would probably need a pretty big tank at high pressure to run it very long. I dunno the math of it, though.

Cool jeremy. I keep telling Chantal to use a cordless drill in here silly boat races here and win it LUKE style
And luke that drill is aweosme 36v lmfo sweet my stupid 18v has the BMS shut it down all the time when I put any realy load on it.

Thanks for the kind wishes, folks, they worked, in as much as I won a prize and now have a shiny new Makita tool kit. I wasn't the fastest, but won the prize for innovation. Even so I was pretty quick, as the boat I ran around neck and neck with had a GPS and was doing 7 kts, well over the maximum hull speed for my Duck Punt. I reckon we probably averaged around 6 to 6 1/2 kts around the course, with my opponent being very slightly faster on the straights but with me having much better acceleration and sharper turning circle around the marks.

The Makita lithium battery pack I was using was too hot to touch after the race, and was nearly flat. It looks like I drained most of a 54 Wh pack in a little under 3 minutes................... Interestingly the Makita pack doesn't seem to have a BMS that cuts the power when it gets abused like this, and the drill didn't really even get warm, even though it must have been running at way over it's rated power (my guess is that it was peaking at over 1 kW, based on the heat in the battery pack and short endurance). One of the spectators reckoned that the front 1/4 of the bottom of my boat was out of the water as I went around, even though I was lying as far forward as I could get, well forward of amidships. With two drills it would probably plane, I think (something for next year., perhaps........).

Here are some photos of the other contestants, taken by me, so none of my boat, I'm afraid.

The paddle boat, Ayrspeed, was fully amphibious and drove down the slip straight into the water. He competed last year, with "only" four cordless drills driving the paddles, this year he'd added two more drills driving auxiliary propellers.


Long tail drives were popular, with several boats sporting model aircraft propellers on the end of long shafts.



The air boat drive was pretty effective, I suspect that if we'd been pitched against each other in the heats we'd have been pretty evenly matched, as when we ran a short distance alongside each other after the race (albeit when I had a nearly flat battery) we seemed to be pretty close in speed.


The most entertaining entry by far was the gentleman who built "Something Fishy", a flapping fin propelled shark, with the pilot lying inside the submerged hull. Getting in was like something from a James Bond film, as the bow section opened up and the gentleman swam in feet first, whilst his patient wife stood knee deep in water holding it for him. It wasn't fast, but did make it around the course, with the pilot steering via a mirror mounted on the "conning tower). Only in England would you see this level of eccentricity, I suspect.




The winner was "Velociraptor", driven by a V4 array of four cordless drills driving a single shaft and model aircraft propeller via a lot of bevel gears. It was, like "Quackers", running at well over hull speed and clearly climbing her own bow wave. I suspect that with a flatter section aft she might have got up on the plane, or at least closer to it.


I believe there will be a video of the event posted some time over the next week or so. I'm also trying to get some copies of photos of "Quackers" in action, as I am keen to see what she looks like going at speed.

Jeremy

Well done Jeremy, it looks like a lot of fun, but we all know it is also deadly serious amongst the competitors. multiple drills and a bigger prop next year then!

Great work. Glad your hard work paid off. I watched the video from last year. Some very interesting boats there quite creative.

Jeremy Harris said:

The most entertaining entry by far was the gentleman who built "Something Fishy", a flapping fin propelled shark, with the pilot lying inside the submerged hull. Getting in was like something from a James Bond film, as the bow section opened up and the gentleman swam in feet first, whilst his patient wife stood knee deep in water holding it for him. It wasn't fast, but did make it around the course, with the pilot steering via a mirror mounted on the "conning tower). Only in England would you see this level of eccentricity, I suspect.

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Haha ... i reckon so ....

Sounds like it was great fun. Wish I could have been there.

The water looks quite calm, so the wind seems to have cooperated on the glassy surface of the pond or mini-lake.

Nice, that you came home "the innovator" with a new toolkit too. 8)

They should have had some prize for the shark for most unique-eccentric or whacky design.

Congratulations Jeremy!

No noise, oil slicks, or air pollution; job well done! 8)

Thanks again folks. The day turned out to be great, despite the very high winds we had on Thursday, and the resulting damage to the show site on Friday that postponed the start by a day. The photos make it look deceptively calm, but once out towards the centre of the lake, to the left of the photos, things were a bit choppy, although not enough to cause anyone any problems.

This year all the boats were allowed back on the water just before the final, so we could just blast around for fun, which was as much fun as the race, and proved entertaining for the crowd. I spent much of the time doing the boat equivalent of pulling donuts, as with the drive leg turned at 90 deg my boat would just spin around like top.

I agree, the gentleman with the motorised shark should have won a prize, if only because I reckon he did well to stay in that cold water for around an hour, plus I reckon he was over 70 years old at a guess. His wife also deserves a prize for standing knee deep in that cold water for so long!

Jeremy Harris said:

I agree, the gentleman with the motorised shark should have won a prize, if only because I reckon he did well to stay in that cold water for around an hour, plus I reckon he was over 70 years old at a guess. His wife also deserves a prize for standing knee deep in that cold water for so long!

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The logo on the side of his shark is rather interesting also. I think he and Luke have something in common...

lol I saw that graphic and immediately liked the styling. Rocket-ship themed.