This website serves as a holding place for everything related to that time I put a trolling motor and a bunch of solar panels on a kayak, rigged up a reverse osmosis water maker, and then traversed the Intracoastal Waterway.
My name is Aric, I’m a retired (23 Years) Navy Veteran and now a full-time business owner. Married with three kids (17F/15M/9M).
The idea came to me one day just looking for something fun to do, I really wanted to do the Appalachian Trail this year, but had to settle for just 5 days near Damascus, VA (on the trail) with my boys. My start-up business has done great with the economy rebounding so well in 2021, so 6 months on the trail just wasn’t feasible… next year!?
So, what else to do… I love being on the water, under the water, and around the water. Many of our customers use our products (batteries) on their kayaks, so I wanted to 1) give it a try to get the customer perspective, and 2) our home backs up to a creek that connects to the Intracoastal waterway. Put two and two together and it just sort of clicked.
After doing many searches on extended kayak adventures I have learned that I’m by no means setting any records in the world of kayaking. Check out these crazy people…
Freya Hoffmeister – 30,000 miles around North America
Oskar Speck’s 30,000 Mile Paddle (in 1932)
Much respect to those two, their arms had to be like bricks when they were finished. Speck’s story was a really good read, I dug into him, he left Germany before WW2 and was still kayaking when the war broke out, which changed the whole dynamic of his trip. Good read if you have the time.
So, I haven’t found anyone that has put legitimate effort into powering an electric kayak motor from solar for extended periods (days and weeks). Most people charge up their battery at home, run the motor until the battery is dead, and then go back home. Looking around for commercial solutions only provided a few products that would barely keep a cell phone charged, I need a LOT more watts. So, I did some basic numbers on watt consumption/production and realized it’s completely possible to power a kayak from just 3-4 of the 100 Watt flexible panels. Settling in at a speed of 2-3 miles per hour would only cost roughly 230 watts of power.
So, the next step was to purchase the kayak, the trolling motor, and a couple of flexible solar panels. The first ones were garbage, the second set was garbage, and then I purchased the Sunpower 110 Watt panels and they met their rating (well close enough), so we were in business. After a couple of test runs and an overnight shake-down trip, I was all in and the date was set!
There was also VERY little on kayaking the Gulf Coast ICW. There are many sailboats that traverse it, but not a lot of kayak info. My questions were/are about things like barge traffic, alligators, food/water, and tent camping. There’s almost nothing out there that I could find, so it’s kind of uncharted (kayak) territory.
That’s the back story to how this started and the effort that went into it. From inception to shoving off was about 7 weeks, mostly delayed due to business engagements. Could have probably been completely ready in about 2-3 weeks if I had the information that is now available on this website! 😉