We arrived at Rossiter Quay at 08:45. Awestruck by the enormous looking multi-crew rowing boat that sat in on the quayside. Looking not unlike a maxi yacht without a mast, this is a serious piece of kit. It would be amazing to see these guys off in La Gomera in a months time or so.
Charlie Rossiter, the proprieter of the company kindly gives us a great deal of his time and we sit in his office discussing propulsion systems, boat steerage, buying options and likely costs. We cover time-frame of rebuilds/refurbishments and are pleasantly surprised by how quickly the yard could turn a boat around if needed. More importantly though we are impressed by their flexibility, having many crews coming down to the yard at the weekend to hijack their boat for a show, leaving the yard bereft for a few days until its return. To them, this is part of working with the individual teams and is very impressive.
We had a good look at the pedal drive mechanism previously developed for Justin Coleman's boat, 'Atlantic Song' and determine at least that the pedal mechanism would likely need to be level and the prop offset rather than the other way around, to avoid knee, ankle and hip injuries.
The original pedal drive comes from bikes such as these that are more often used in the far east as I understand. As you can see from the picture there is a slight offset from the crank to the drive at the rear and this explains why when you straighten up the bottom end and stick a propeller on it, you end up with a slight offset at the pedal end. Not ideal.
Conversely a slight offset of the propeller is unlikely to make a huge difference. (We hope).
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