I’m slowly grinding through all the testing that needs to happen to make the pedal drive canoe a reality. Today we tested it with longer legs and larger feet and several different rudder blades.
I was holding my breath on the feet because I really can’t lower the flood level any farther, so however much heel clearance we have is what we’re stuck with. Tom’s inseam is 33 1/2 and his shoe size is 11 1/2 and with water shoes on he’s just barely making it. So I think the system is going to max out at a size 12 foot although technically it would be possible to go lower if someone was willing to make some sort of neoprene spray skirt for the drive box to raise the flood level.
Next, we tried the 6 inch wide rudder compared to my original 5 1/4. We both felt like the 5 1/4 felt a lot nicer but there’s always the possibility that what we’re feeling is increased drag, so once I cut the wider rudder shorter to make the immersed area equal we will have to try it again. I’m hoping that this is the problem, because 6 inch widths are readily available and I really don’t want my students ripping 6061 aluminum on a tablesaw, (I just don’t trust that they’re gonna do it right and not hurt themselves) and that’s a pretty long cut for a jigsaw.
It was also interesting to see Tom had no issues with stability even though this canoe is quite a bit smaller than what I would normally recommend for his 200 lb weight. I leaned down from the dock and pushed about another 70 pounds of weight onto the boat and I was still pretty comfortable with the flood level in the box which tells me that I would be completely happy with the size that I would actually recommend for him.
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