Pacific Rowboat

I should have noticed Sharpii2 talked about "the most industrious rower", while I talked about "the very best of talented and well trained top athletes", but the latter aren't found in cross ocean rowing, as that isn't where the money is.

The human body is very inefficient with energy, so the real long-term power output limit is what talented and well trained top athletes can eat and digest and then convert into propulsion energy, so I think there is still a lot to be gained in cross ocean rowing with the food that is taken along, and the needed money to attract endurance top athlete hotshots, and the work of involved nutritionists and personal trainers and doctors when seeking the limits. A warm meal is comforting, but it takes relatively a lot of time, when compared to the right ingredients dissolved in freshwater and swallowing it while rowing.

Except the limitations of getting sufficient energy into the body, I don't see limitations for the bodies of the very best of talented in long time effort and well trained top athletes to deliver 400 W (0.536 hp) × 14 hours a day × 360 days a year. Needs a boat that doesn't need to work on, so the rower can sleep 9½ hours a day and take ½ an hour per day for personal care, and do the rest while rowing.

 

When all of this is done, then the results still depends far more on the constantly chosen course and the boat's design, which is what Sharpii2 started to say to begin with, and I agree to.

 

given it was gonna spend nearly all its life in very deep water (except that last critical bit, I guess) I'm surprised that it wouldn't have some sort of fairly long, deep keel fin or rudder, instead of something that would be fine in shallow waters.
I always thought part of Full Keel design was to get a lot of keel area while still maintaining reasonable draft.
If you had asked me "how to maintain total tracking, reduce rolling, and absolute minmum drag, with draft not a factor, on a cross ocean row-boat", I've have probably started with a 6" wide, 1/2" thick, 8ft long, "tail" angled downward about 30%.

 

You are right that the wind and the currents play a huge roll in the success of any ocean rowing passage. But there are almost an infinite number of conditions (maybe I should say an indeterminent number of conditions) that play on any boat and any rower, and the only proof in the pudding is when you make it to the other shore, and the number of days and hours that you take for your trip. Had Jacob not rowed a stroke, Emerson could likely have ended up in Asia or Alaska as any place else. The wind and currents set him backwards almost more than going forwards, and this is evident in his GPS positions and track. We could see he was really struggling with distance and time all the way to Hawaii. But after Hawaii, he managed to pick up more favorable winds and currents.

While I designed Emerson to track well downwind, in heavy air conditions it probably is a detrimental characteristic. Perhaps the boat should be shaped with a little less windage so that it would be easier to move into the wind.

 

I intended the keel to give good tracking with a reasonable amount of wetted surface. Remember, this is a very slow boat, and it has to be easy to row in all sea conditions, friction drag being paramount, consistent with good stability. A deep, narrow keel would be harder to row because the keel would want to go one way while the hull would want to go another, all the while the rower wanting a different direction entirely.

 

The world record for 100k indoor row is around 6 hours / 260W. Your suggestion is outlandish.

 

Good ref for elite watts.
Just how good are male pro road cyclists? | CyclingTips https://cyclingtips.com/2017/06/just-how-good-are-male-pro-road-cyclists/

 

Yes, my 400 W × 14 hours a day × 360 days a year looks to be far too optimistic. What's then left is the assertion that the long-term power output limit is the energy that the athlete can eat and digest, at the body's low efficiency rate for physical output. In the about 21 stages* of total ± 3.500 km in the Tour de France they can't keep up eating so they partly burn body weight, but they don't only eat specialized food, so there's still room for progress I think. But then there's also something like the mind that needs to be comforted by some nice food when the body has so much pain to endure.

* usually with about 2 rest days with a transition to another place

 

Note in cycling weight is very important since they have to take it all up the mountains in the course, so it's all about Watts-per-kilo (W/kg) there. In rowing this is not so important as they don't have to overcome mountains, so a high long-term power output without caring so much about W/kg is far more achievable in long distance rowing than in cycling.

 

Start and finish picture differences of Ralph Tuijn looks like he burns a lot more energy than he eats on the oceans.

 

From the previous link it looks like there's a lot of down wind sailing there...

 

Angelique, one other oddity about your post was the the time allotted for sleep. The more you work, the less sleep you need. In college, I averaged 2 hours per night over 4 years. There was no catching up at holidays or weekends. I never really got in the habit of sleeping longer than that. In order to keep my asthma under control and not get thrown out of the Air Force, I ran at night. I either rode my bike or ran for 8 hours a day, plus competed on several sports teams, in addition to my job. On weekends I competed in triathlons and bike races and drove myself to and from the events; or I trained on off weeks, typically more than 12 hours per day. I generally slept from about 1:00 to 3:00 AM, got up and ran for an hour, then took a short nap before going in to work. Events such as the Florida Challenge require you to take a two hour rest each day. If I get the chance to do it, I will run 22 and 2 for the whole race. I have designed the boat around that idea. I can sleep as much as I want now, but I still don't often sleep for more than two hours at one time. I find it hard to loosen up and get moving again if I do. The Vendee competitors operate on a similar schedule. A reasonable comparison for rowers might be Joe McConaughy, who holds the Appalachian Trail speed record of 45 days. Using guestimates from other efforts, he would have needed to average over 16 hours of quick walking per day, and states he ate 8000 calories per day. He is an elite distance athlete with multiple speed records and years of experience. He had to find his way into towns and shop for food along the way, probably every three days or so. Assuming he binged 15,000 calories in two hours in town and packed the rest with him, and stopped for three fifteen minute breaks each day plus a lunch break of an hour, there isn't more than an average of four hours left for sleeping. And I doubt he would have done it all in one shot. He also didn't have the chance to optimize the food, he just grabbed what he could find in the nearest towns. That probably means lots of pizza, icecream and donuts. He mentions Oreo cookies, like a package per day.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/spor...478688d23b4_story.html?utm_term=.8f05cdbf0cd6

 

It would be interesting if you had been under surveilence during the whole time. I suspect that if you were, you'd find that you nodded off during various times during your awake hours. The seven to eight hours of sleep can come in many types of doses. You can sleep the entire eight hours at once. You can sleep an hour at a time. Or you can nod off for a few minutes at a time. It is possible that you got all your REM sleep during your two-hour stretch of sleep. You may be able to sleep even while you are running. This implies a certain amount of danger similar to what I experienced on a road trip from Kennebunk Maine to Detroit around Lake Erie. By the time I reached Toledo Ohio, I started nodding off uncontrollably. I woke once suddenly to see I was barreling towards a barricade. I was lucky to get the vehicle straightened out without hitting it, and there were no police in the area. I made it home somehow but vowed to never do this again. Good luck, Superman.

 

Thanks Phil, I wasn't aware about so little sleep in combination with great physical exertion. Karel Sabbe knocked off over 4 days from Joe McConaughy's Appalachian Trail speed record, but Karel did this supported, so I'd consider Joe's feat to be a bigger achievement.

 

Here's an March 27, 2015 article about Ralph Tuijn with an interview video (the article and video are both in Dutch). At the end of the video Ralph tells that for his next solo Atlantic rowing crossing record attempt the goal is to do it within 50 days from mainland Europe to mainland South America, with a daily schedule of 4 × 4 hours of rowing and 4 × 2 hours for rest plus the rest. He also tells that in record setting attempts in ocean rowing salt water sores under the armpits and on the buttocks and some more private places just have to be taken for granted, as it's too much of a slow down to have enough fresh water available for washing. Since the interview was 4 years ago I'll guess the mentioned planned record attempt is history by now.

P.S. - I've enhanced some typos and added a few more details from the video interview.