The Expedition

We can further refine a sense of scale and direction by moving from the rather abstract specification above to a statement of where, exactly, we plan to take these machines. By mapping the two disparate sets of constraints upon each other, something much like a design should begin to emerge.

One of the primary reasons we located the final staging area of the Microship project on Camano Island is ready access to some of the most spectacular waters in North America... Puget Sound, the San Juans, Gulf Islands, Princess Louisa Inlet, and more. The entire Pacific Northwest is a favorite cruising destination, yet lends itself to small-scale gunkholing quite unlike San Francisco Bay or the open coast of California. Our test sails and feasibility studies, therefore, are all taking place here.

Bike experience has proven that a shakedown cruise of significant scale is essential before taking off on a grand adventure – the need to rely completely upon on-board systems is never adequately tested by stringing together local day trips. The first "mini-expedition" was in the fall of 2001; the second is described here.

With all this at last behind us and the lab mothballed, we’ll be off on our first serious adventure... a circumnavigation of the eastern US, possibly beginning somewhere on the Missouri River. (A friend pointed out recently that since we’d be tracing part of the Lewis & Clark route in reverse, we should call this the Clewless & Lark Expedition...)

There begins the downhill run, though from what I’ve read of the upper Missouri that’s a bit of an oversimplification. We’ll traipse 2,546 miles across the northern plains and down between Nebraska and Iowa... cutting east to join the Mississippi River just above St. Louis. A short float downriver brings us to the mouth of the Ohio... then upriver slightly to the Tennessee, whereupon we turn south and continue along the Tenn-Tom Waterway and down the Tombigbee River to Mobile, Alabama (the more obvious parallel path down the lower Mississippi is relatively hostile to small boats). At the Gulf, we turn left on the Intracoastal Waterway and meander all the way around Florida (through the Everglades and the Keys) and north along the Atlantic Coast. The ICW will carry us past Boston with no shortage of interesting exploration enroute.

At this point, unless forced by seasons or sanity to shortcut up the Hudson, we encounter open coast for a while as we traverse the exquisitely convoluted Maine shoreline – then into the Bay of Fundy followed by a short portage across New Brunswick at Moncton (to skip the suicidal outside coast of Nova Scotia). After darting around the Gaspé Peninsula during a favorable weather window, we’ll head up the St. Lawrence, turn left at Montreal to sail down Lake Champlain, pop over to the Erie Canal, travel back in time across New York, emerge into Lake Erie, cruise up Lake Huron, wander into Lake Superior unless we elect instead to cut through Chicago to the Illinois, head upriver at Duluth, portage over to the Upper Mississippi, float down Old Muddy, then finally slog up the Ohio River to Louisville, my old boyhood home, where we’ll stop at my father’s house and truck the tattered and filthy Microships back to our Camano Island lab to fix things and address the long list of essential changes that should have been obvious at the beginning. And then? Who knows... maybe Europe?

It’s clear that a wide range of conditions will be encountered – infestations of mosquitoes and jetskis, high tidal currents, storms, urban waterways, exposed coasts, humans of uncertain motives, and things we don’t even know about. Every day on the water is different. Throughout it all, we need to be able to accomplish daily haulouts as necessary by deploying landing gear, camp on-water when shore options are limited, resupply every few days, switch propulsion modes as conditions dictate, and manage daily life support... all while presenting the illusion of stability to the world by utilizing our technomadic systems to publish, consult, interface with the educational community, collect and post environmental data, and run the strange business that is Nomadic Research Labs.

22 Beautiful Legs:  The Microship Coastal/Inland US Tour

Leg Name	Mileage/Cumulative	Target Date Range	Features
Missouri River:  Headwaters to St. Louis.	2,546/2,546	Spring	Wild west country, many dams & portages first 1,800 miles.  Three Forks, Montana, then both Dakotas, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri
Mississippi River	195/2,741	Summer	St. Louis, heavy river trafffic and locks
Ohio River jog	47/2,788	Summer	Upriver between Illinois and Kentucky
Tennessee River	215/3,003	Summer	Land Between the Lakes & Tennessee
Tenn-Tom Waterway	253/3,256	Fall	Languid waterway through the deep south
Tombigbee River to Mobile, AL	247/3,503	Fall	Salt water at last!  Left turn toward Florida...
Gulf Intracoastal	291/3,794	Fall	Pensacola, Panama City
Florida West Coast	593/4,387	arrive Key West by Halloween; explore Keys until December	Florida's wilderness, Tampa/St. Pete, Everglades, across Florida Bay to Key West
Florida East Coast	527/4,914	Jan-Feb	Intracoastal Waterway through Keys, Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, Daytona, Cape Canaveral, St. Augustine, Jacksonville.
Florida to Norfolk	717/5,631	March-April	Southeast coast via ICW:  Savannah, Charleston, Outer Banks
Norfolk to Boston	591/6,222	May-June	Washington DC, Chesapeake Bay, New York City, Long Island Sound, Cape Cod
Boston to Moncton	675/6,897	Early Summer	Maine Coast, Bay of Fundy
Atlantic Provinces and St. Lawrence Seaway to Montreal	820/7,717	Summer	20 mile portage across New Brunswick, rounding of Gaspé Peninsula, St. Lawrence River through Quebec
Lake Champlain and Hudson River	254/7,971	Summer	Vermont and New York, Champlain Canal and Hudson River to Troy/Albany
Erie Canal	363/8,334	Late Summer	Cross New York State on historic canal -- Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo
Great Lakes	1,000/9,334	Fall	Lakes Erie, Huron, & Michigan -- Cleveland, Detroit, and Chicago
Illinois River	327/9,661	Fall	Through Chicago on I-M canal, down Illinois to Mississippi
Mississippi Reprise	218/9,879	Fall	Through St. Louis again
Home Stretch	375/10,254	Arrive Oct-Nov	End in Louisville, Kentucky (father's home)

So let’s start looking at the boats that are going to make all this possible...