Fitting Out the Expedition

     In 1913 Teddy Roosevelt fitted out an expedition to explore the River of Doubt in the Amazon. The choice of improper supplies and heavy dug-out canoes resulted in a slow torturous river descent; death, starvation, murder, and madness followed.

     History is full of disastrous expeditions in which the disaster began almost entirely during the fitting out process. The choice of equipment and supplies often determine whether a journey is one of comfort or privation.

     The Suwannee is a powerful, treacherous, unforgiving river that can rise or fall 20 feet in a single day. Alligators infest the banks. The weather can be hot, torrid, with the air heavy with humidity. Communications with civilization are spotty to doubtful. We will be on our own.
       Native settlements are few, scattered, and the inhabitants may or may not be friendly. The movie “Deliverance” comes to mind.
       Hillbilly buggery aside, isolation limits our ability to supply our expedition. Fueling is only available in an isolated settlement located at the mouth of the River. 

     Our houseboat is well suited to thwart the shoals of a naturally flowing river with its 20 inches of Draft. Unfortunately, there are two major downsides of using this boat for our trip.

     First of all the boat is not suitable for travel on the open ocean – and we have 80 miles of Open Ocean to cross to get to the Suwannee in the first place. The houseboat’s catamaran hulls glide over up to three foot of chop. When the seas get bigger than 3 feet the waves start to come over the front deck. Since the front of the boat's cabin is your basic sliding glass door, no different than the one which leads to your backyard, the boat’s seagoing limitations become quite apparent. Can you imagine giant waves crashing against your backyard sliding glass door? Scary. We will be dependent on a weather window to complete this leg of the journey.

     The second major limitation has to do with the boat’s limited speed and power. Its top speed of 8.5 mph will make it hard to penetrate the upper reaches of the river where the current is about half that or more. Additionally, our houseboat is hardly nimble. The limited turning angle of the single 115 horsepower Yamaha outboard results in the boat having a turning circle of a small ship. To improve its ability to maneuver we have installed a 75 pound thrust remote control trolling motor in the bow. The trolling motor enhances the little ship’s agility in tight spaces and gives a limited back-up propulsion capability.

     Every boat is a compromise and our boat sacrifices speed, seaworthiness, maneuverability, and nautical good looks for shoal draft and an efficient use of space resulting in a spacious cabin and expansive decks.

     Given our main boat’s inability to reach tight places we are have constructed a 14 foot dinghy/exploration/resupply launch from a 1985 semi-vee aluminum boat. I have spent inordinate amounts of my free time and money creating what we feel is the perfect towable launch to complement the houseboat. Last year we used the same hull with a very used 15 horsepower tiller controlled outboard. This motor left us stuck repeatedly such that any use of our dinghy was an ordeal.

     Since we will be far from civilization at times on the Suwannee and its many tributaries having a breakdown on this trip might be life-threatening. Hence we have installed a brand-new 25 horsepower Evinrude E-TEC outboard, purported to be the most reliable motor on the market. We have backed that up with a small electric trolling motor good for several miles, and finally a good set of oars. We have installed center console wheel steering, redundancy in bilge pumps, lighting, depth finder, and full safety equipment. The boat has floatation which makes it unsinkable. It has a top speed of about 27 mph and a range of up to 150 miles on its integral 12 gal fuel tank. I now have about $8000.00 invested in this little boat.

     We will also be carrying two Kayaks, a two person ABS kayak and a unique clear Plexiglas kayak. These will be used to explore springs and various tributaries inappropriate for the motorized launch. Since the Suwannee teems with giant alligators I am somewhat concerned about exploring in these fragile craft.

    Navigation on the Suwannee may be a problem. I have searched high and low for nautical charts of the river. Nothing worthy of the name exists. The best I have is a 10.4 inch Garmin Chartplotter with an inland data chip on it. It shows the river's course and little else. Absent is the critical depth data. I have several nautical charts that also lack any detailed data. The truth is that government map makers are woefully underfunded and they still produce charts based on 40 or even 50 year old surveys. On a naturally flowing river that is constantly shifting course and depth charts rapidly become useless with age. Commercial Chartplotter data is mostly derived from government surveys. Commercial mapmakers tend to do their own surveys only where the market produces enough demand. That is they make very good maps of heavily traveled and well marked waterways in heavily populated areas where you really don’t need a map. Go out into the boonies where nothing is marked, the place where you really require a map, and the detail falls to near zero. That is the case in the Suwannee.

       We have made a careful examination of the environment in which we will have to operate in and have out fitted our vessel accordingly. The following is our carefully planned supply manifest: Beer - Miller 64 - 12 cases, Vodka 6 liters, Rum 6 liters, Gin 1.5 liters, Jack Daniels 1.5 liters, Jameson's Irish Whiskey a fifth, Diet Coke 4 cases, Diet Sprite 1 case, Limes 1 bag, Mint leaves 2 bunches, and Crackers 1 box.

Our two main concerns for resupply will be beer, fuel, and ice - probably in that order. If we have fuel we can make ice, and if we have beer we don’t worry too much about the other two.    

     Our supply dilemma is thus: We consume one case of beer a day; our generator burns about .5 gal per hour or 12 gallons per 24 hour day plus two miles per gallon on the outboard, and our five day ice chests hold 100 pounds of ice and usually last three days. Hence once we get on the river our total fuel capacity of 120 gallons should last about 6 days, our beer supply will only last until 24 hours past the first guests that visit, and three days for the ice. Our expedition supply thus requires 34 pounds of ice, 140 pounds of fuel, and 20 pounds of beer, or a total of 194 lbs of consumables per day. That does not include water for bathing or any other miscellaneous consumables. Food? Sacrifices will have to be made somewhere so crackers and popcorn will have to do.

     I just hope that our planning is correct as resupply operations will not be easy. We plan to use our specially designed dinghy in order to conduct these resupply missions. We will also be carrying a dolly and 5 gal gas cans. We will take the launch to within walking range of any supply point and then carry what we can from there.

    We have identified various liquor stores and gas stations within dolly range of various landing spots along the route.

     This will be much more difficult than it sounds. For example if we can find a fueling station say a quarter of a mile from where we can park the boat it will take 12 round trips or 6 miles of pushing the dolly to refuel, not counting other supplies.

     If it were all easy it would not be an adventure. Adventures are not easy, nor in this case are they cheap.

Our Friend Jesse was so concerned with our safety on this boat that he sunk it just to make sure the positive floatation would work as advertised.