1925 Article on History of the Outboard Motor by Finnish Outboard Designer and Metalurgist Gillis E. Huss - Part Two

This is Part 2 of the article started previously in Mootori.  Huss continues his comparison of Evinrude and Archimedes outboards.

However, the Evinrude engine, as well constructed as it was in many respects, was comparatively inferior in detail. The counterweight, which balances the parts moving back and forth, and which should have been located opposite them, i.e. in the knees of the crankshaft on the opposite side of the crank pin, was also adapted to the flywheel.

Because the latter was located very far away due to the long bearing structure, it naturally created unnecessarily strong vibrations when the engine was running, which in a thin and light boat often caused such an echo that the boat began to shake violently. I dare not suppose ignorance to have been the cause of this unfavorable design.  Guessing — here, as in many other cases, the right design had to give way to the cheaper one.

 

             

Most of Evinrude's followers scrupulously copied the counterweight in the flywheel, and the few who had realized the fallacy of this design never went to great lengths to try to achieve such a perfect balancing that the engine speed had been made to rise even a little bit higher.

 (The "Arcko" engine, with its well-weighted counterweights forged together with the crankshaft, is probably the only exception. Using a special carburetor, the speed of this engine has been raised to over 3,000 revolutions per minute, more difficult = no vibrations.)   [2022 Note:  Could "Arcko" been a typo, and was meant to be "Avecko" - the motor that Huss designed?]

However, it is impossible to achieve perfect balancing in single-cylinder engines without using additional machinery. Theoretically speaking, in order to build a perfectly balanced engine, it is still not necessary to carry out the division into several cylinders. The kind of two-cylinder model that the French call »moteur eguilibre» fulfills the intended ideal, albeit with this engine, at least in the original design, is an unnecessarily complicated piece of machinery.  In the two-cylinder engine last mentioned and shown in outline in Fig. 4, the reciprocating masses balance each other perfectly.

In reality, absolute balancing cannot be achieved, because some disproportionality always remains, no matter how carefully the machine's cylinder is built.

Creating a high-speed, vibration-free engine was the goal of the builder of the "Archimedes engine", when he chose an engine whose cylinders are evenly opposed and pistons move in opposite directions. 

The relatively complex shaft belonging to the motor shown in Figure 4 has been abandoned here, sacrificing a bit of the possibility of balancing, and it has been replaced by the two-knee shaft according to Figure 5. This shows the old fashioned Archimedes engine, cut in half.

Between the oldest models of the Archimedes engines and the Evinrude engine, there was hardly any more essential difference as far as the rest of the machinery is concerned, but over time a whole series of interesting and appropriate structures have given this a design aimed at perfection for the engine. I would like to mention a few of the most significant details of this development.

Archimedes was probably the first outboard motor that was freed from battery ignition hindered by various shortcomings and equipped with a high-voltage magneto. This device was fitted to a stand that could be moved around the axis, so that the setting of the ignition could be done by moving the magnet along with the stand. With this design of the mag a strong spark was still obtained from the net device, when the device was rotated to a position corresponding to both late ignition (when starting) and early ignition (as is well known, this is not the case with ``Bosch'' magnetic devices operating with a standard ignition layout).

After the war, no magnetic device could be obtained from Germany, which caused A-B Archimedes started his own manufacture of these instruments. The form then chosen was what is now called a flywheel magneto (because the steel magnet of the magnetic device is attached to the flywheel of the engine), and it may be interesting to hear in this connection that the Archimedes flywheel magneto actually gave rise to the excellent flywheel magneto which manufactured by the world-famous company name Robert Bosch, in Stuttgart.

                    

A weakness that was common both to the old-style Archimedes engine and to most other outboard engines, but which has been corrected in the newer models of this engine, deserves to be mentioned.

 
The cooling water pump placed in the gearbox, kept running by the eccentric, started to leak regularly after being in practice for a long time, due to wear of the piston. The water was then able to penetrate past the worn piston into the gearbox housing, causing the lubrication of both the heavily loaded gear and especially the bearings of the propeller shaft and drive shaft to deteriorate. But if that's not enough, the water penetrated upwards into the pipe surrounding the drive shaft as well. The pipe had to be equipped with holes so that the water could escape when it penetrated upwards, because otherwise it could have penetrated into the engine's crankcase and interrupted the engine's operation.

For this reason, the cooling water pump models in newer models are placed outside the gearbox, as shown in Figure 6. The eccentric that uses the pump is surrounded by a pockenholz ring, which, as is known, needs no other lubrication than water, in which it moves all the time.

 Some models of the »Archimedes» engine are equipped with a convenient take-back device and a device that automatically sets the rudder arm in a position corresponding to the straight travel direction.

The Archimedes engine, which was based on the Swedish engineers O.W. Hult and C. A. Hult patent, and manufactured by Aktiebolaget Archimedes, Stockholm, was put on the market relatively soon after the Evinrude engine began to gain popularity in Europe. With its many excellent features, the Archimedes motor soon conquered the market all over the world, soon becoming the leading brand in the world market.

In addition to the determined work of the factory's leading technicians, this has probably been influenced by the precise selection of materials, the quality of the company's available machines and tools and, last but not least, the precise work of the factory's convenient and skillfully trained workforce.

1922 - Outboard Engine Facts and Fancies

You May Own a Yacht as Big as a Liner or as Fast as a Hydroplane, but You Must Acknowledge that this Family is  Having Fun

WHEN the Red Gods call you to the Great Outdoors there are many ways in which you can journey upon the Outbound Trail.  Deep down in the heart of almost all of us is a love for the water. Probably this is inherited from our forebears who had to cross the ocean in cockleshell craft to reach these shores.  Commercial necessity has pushed the population away from the coasts, but even though the environment is changed the old love for smiling waters and the sting of spray is with us all.

There have been days when one could not commune with Mother Nature without an amount of laborious travel that did much to dull the keen edge of enjoyment.  The outboard engine has been one of the great factors in the increasing love of the open spaces and the possibility of reaching these places from the marts of trade without labor to which office-bound muscles are not suited.

A Crowd Does Not Seem to Bother this Outboard.

Rowing, as an exercise, is without doubt beneficial, but when taken with this result in mind, it must be assimilated in small doses.  Even in the best of cases it becomes irksome at the end of a day when picnicking has brought somnolence.  It is in cases of this kind that the diminutive outboard pays dividends.  The modern outboard is probably the best example of multum in parvo that science has perfected.

If you have any doubts as to the progress of science and the untold values of engineering experimentation, look at your outboard.  Small, concise, light in weight and economical, yet it opens up opportunities for exploration which may bring to the not too literal minded the supreme satisfaction of the discoverer.  Carried up a woodland stream by the faithful engine, you too, may stand on a spot like Robinson Crusoe, "Monarch of all you survey." 

All Ashore for Lunch! The Young Skipperess Has Made Her Landing in Exactly the Right Spot

Picture to yourself the situation.   Above, the trees arch over the stream forming a green canopy tempering the rays of the summer sun.  The rustling of the leaves are tuned by the Divine hand with the sweet songs of the birds into a sublime melody which no composer of this or any other day has even approximated.  Ahead—there is another bend, other vistas of delight which ever beckon onward.  Here the stream widens out into a quiet pool, the home of many turtles who plop merrily into the water at your approach.  From an overhanging branch a chipmunk scolds you for disturbing his apparently aimless scamperings.  A bit of white water is ahead.  A touch of the throttle and the boat springs ahead.   Careful there!   Watch your course till you jump into the still water above the rapid. 

For Towing a Fleet of Canoes to the Camp Site an Outboard is Ideal

The character of the stream changes.  Instead of the gently rising, wooded banks, you glide through a stream-carved cut in living rock.  Far above a bald eagle wheels, and wheels until it seems that his baleful eye has spotted you and he is ready for the sickening drop into your boat. 

Mr. Eagle finally swoops out of sight as you swing around another turn and find a shelving sandy beach which says "welcome" just as surely as if a host was standing with outstretched hand.

An outboard will turn your canoe into a speedster in short order!

With a swing of the tiller and a snap of the switch you glide up the beach and come to rest for luncheon. Spread a blanket, dig up the basket of lunch and a pile of cushions and sit you down to a feast that rivals the nectar of the gods. Right here you realize one of the great beauties of the outboard. There is no need of fussing with an anchor because the boat cannot be brought close to shore. There is no dinghy into which everything must be piled and several trips ashore made until you are worn and sulky. The boat will wait for you safely until ready for the down stream journey.

Hours of Paddling by Using One Outboard to Tow the Fleet

If the trip is a long one it may be necessary to pour a little more gasoline into the tank from a spare can. Add a bit of oil and she is ready again. Compare this with the procedure of getting a larger boat under way. If the stream happens to be a mountain one it may be necessary for you to carry the boat around some particularly difficult rapid or a dam. With the ordinary launch this would be impossible without a wagon and a gang of men. With a light rowboat or canoe and the faithful engine, you can make a portage and be off on another stream in a short while.

Of course all of us do not live where we have woodland streams for our week-endings. Possibly we have homes on the coast where boating is more strenuous. Even then the little engines will come to be a most valuable part of our equipment, for they can be clamped to the dinghy and used to take us out to the moorings as well as saving the back-breaking row to favorite fishing grounds.

To the sailboat owner the outboard is a godsend, giving the advantages of an auxiliary for small sailers without the disadvantages of having a machine permanently installed.

 Either the engine can be hooked to the yacht's stern or, if clamped to the dinghy, will turn that obsequious little craft into a tow-boat.  For making the trips to shore for mail, ice, picture postals and pie, which are the chief articles needed on a cruise, the outboard engined dink is worth its cost every trip. Naturally under these conditions the outboard is as useful to the power boat man as it is to the windjammer.

When an outboard is carried on a power cruiser it gives one a sense of security.  Even the best engines ever made will fail under certain conditions.  Instead of waiting around for a tow, the owner drops the dink overboard, hooks on the outboard and tows home.  The speed may not entitle you to entry in the express cruiser class, but you will get there, which after all is the main item.

ad from this 1922 issue

Outboards are now made in a variety of sizes, speeds and weights to accommodate them to practically even service that lies within the limits of their power.  Some of the double cylinder engines are made up to 3-h.p., although the average is about 2 horse.   This has been found by experience to be the power range required by the majority of rowboats and canoes.  For many years some people considered the outboard as a sort of mechanical toy until they suddenly realized that all over the world thousands were being used by fishermen, guides, forest rangers and wilderness freighters, in their everyday occupations.  If outboards are satisfactory prime movers for men engaged in making their livelihood from water transport, no one can claim that they are not suitable for pleasure service.

article from this 1922 issue

Travelers from all over the world, men who have braved snow-blindness in the frozen north and fever in the miasmic jungles of the Equator, come back and report outboards.  A caller recently told the writer that on a 1,200-mile trip by steamboat through the Canadian wilderness, the only power boat he saw was powered with an outboard.  It was engaged in towing food supplies up a rapid-torn river to a mining camp.

It must be remembered in connection with the use of outboard engines that a boat so equipped is a power boat in the eyes of the law and must be equipped with fire extinguisher, life preservers for all hands, whistle (a mouth operated one will do), a combination red and green bow light and a white stern light, as well as two copies of the pilot rules obtainable from any custom house.  On boats of 16 feet or more length the numbers required by law must be displayed.

If  This Does Not Exemplify the Spirit of the Great Outdoors You Must be a Chronic Cynic

The following bits and pieces are from the same year in The Rudder.

1925 - World's Oldest (Evinrude) Outboard in Use

You find a lot of interesting odds and ends when combing old magazines.  I was hoping to find more about Mr. Craig and his motor in Altoona newspapers, but no luck.  A good photo would be sweet!  
Evinrude was great at creating stories that magazines would publish that, in fact, were puff pieces and ads.
If you accidentally scroll the pages below, the article is on page 134 on the Yard and Shop page.:-)

1925 and 1959: Reminiscing - Across America by Outboard.

Hogg reminisces about his two transcontinental trips which were taken 34 years apart, both with Evinrudes.  His first journey I transcribed from multiple Motor Boating magazines in which it was serialized, you can read it here, but his second voyage can be found here !

Below is an interview with Hogg (pronounced HOAG) where he goes over both trips.

1925 - Part 2 - Among the Glaciers of Alaska With an Evinrude Kicker

This installment in the June 1925 Motor Boating is filled with photos compared to the last issue!   I have  to admit, there really wasn't much mentioned of the Evinrude.  But, as you read,  just remembering that it is their motor makes you respect the older outboards! 

Only boats of very shallow draft can get up Taku River to Twin Glacier Camp.  There is plenty of water in the river for boats drawing five or six feet of water, but they cannot get over the bar that the river has deposited near its mouth in Taku Inlet.  

Even with the little Ikigihk, which can run almost anywhere that's a little damp, we were churning mud and sand for several miles before we finally got over the hump and into the river channel beyond.  Then we had to fight a strong current and dodge a miscellaneous assortment of icebergs before we accomplished the several miles up the Taku River to the landing at Twin Glacier Camp.  

Even with the long hours of summer in Alaska, the day was about gone when we arrived.  Our hostess, of course, had no knowledge of our coming, there being no telegraph or telephone communication between there and Juneau.  A pack of howling malamutes greeted us at the boat landing.  We were delighted, however, to find Mrs. Gray, a buxom lass with a perpetual smile, and a dialect that was as difficult to understand as it is to read Bobby Burns.  She welcomed us into the great log house , which is the main chamber of the hunting lodge, and in about twenty minutes we were thoroughly warmed before a great log fire in a huge fireplace.  Then the dinner gong was sounded, and we sat down to a meal of planked moose steaks, with all the trimming from soup to nuts. 

That meal is another memory.  The moose meat had been furnished by Dr. W. D. Sinclair, surgeon of the Chichigoff Mines, who'd come over from Chichigoff Island  with a fifteen-foot boat and an outboard motor, for a week of moose hunting along the Taku River.  He'd brought in 1,200 pounds of moose meat that morning.  The remaining guests of the camp were two reputed millionaires from Tennessee.  They claimed to be hunters, but in a month's stay around the camp they had killed nothing but about six cases of bourbon and gin that they'd brought down out of Canada - making the journey by canoe down the Taku River from Atlin Lake.  

The Colonel, who seemed to be the big money bag of this precious pair, wasn't a half bad sort of fellow. He broke out a square-face of bonded bourbon, and after sampling it, we were ready to concede that these mighty hunters were probably enjoying life in their own way.  The Taku River country is perhaps about as nearly the sportsman's idea of paradise as can be fond on this earth.  It is an uninhabited wilderness of towering snow-clad mountain peaks, virgin forests, boundless muskegs (marshes), and jungles of underbrush such as one expects to find in the tropics.  Within a two-hour traveling radius of the camp, chiefly by motor boat, one may find every kind of game commonly known in Alaska - moose, black and brown bears, uncountable deer, caribou, bighorn sheep, white mountain goats, and feathered game galore.  

Moose hunting had been one of Wiedley's ambitions from boyhood, so on our second day at Twin Glacier Camp, he took Ikigihk, Tommy Shorty, one of Dr. DeVighne's Indian guides, and one of my high powered rifles, and set out up the river.  In four hours he was back in camp with a fine head, and half a ton of moose meat.  I went fishing that day - took Dr. DeVighne's motor boat The Mud Hen, and went down the river into Turner Lake, a fresh water glacier pool that looks like Yosemite Valley with the floor covered with water.

The first toss of the fly into the lake, and it was swallowed - seemingly by a bucking horse.  Half an hour later, after an indescribably thrilling struggle, I landed a rainbow trout 27 inches long.  I caught three more more fish of similar size before noon, and then quit fishing because I couldn't imagine any possible use for more than 25 pounds of fish a day.

The same day Mrs. Gray went moose hunting in the muskeg over across the river.  She came back late that evening, scratched, bruised, mosquito bitten, and her clothing in tatters.  She told a lurid tale about trying to stalk a moose, and stumbling smack dab upon a huge brown bear.  There is no denying that these bears are perhaps the largest and most ferocious animals on earth, and according to Mrs. Gray's story, the bear promptly wheeled around and chased her up the tallest spruce tree she could find in the muskeg.  The Colonel looked across the table and winked.  Nobody else winked, but the looks of all present signified that the story was accepted with a grain of salt.  

The following day, however, I went moose hunting in the same area with Taku Jim, one of the Indian guides.  Far out in the muskeg we found a  huge spruce tree with monstrous bear tracks in the mud all around it.  Jim suggested we had better climb the tree and comb the muskeg with our field glasses.  

Thereupon I began going up the tree.  About twenty feet from the ground, I observed several branches from which the bark had been peeled as if by someone climbing with hob-nailed boots.  I climbed perpendicular for about 120 feet, and found the same marks all the way up.  It was impossible to climb higher.  

I was reaching for my field glasses when I found a bright scrap of scarlet woolen yarn sticking on a mass of resin that oozed from the tree trunk.  It was a fragment of the red sweater Mrs. Gray was wearing at the time of her reported encounter with the bear. 

Jim and I killed no game that day, but at the dinner table in camp that evening I told the story of the spruce tree in the muskeg, with the bear tracks all around it.  I told about the marks on the branches, and then as a final summing up before the jury, produced the piece of scarlet yarn found in the tree top.  Mrs. Gray's story was verified beyond a reasonable doubt.  As a reward I got a third piece of apple pie.

I learned later that brown bears have no friends among the Alaskans.  Dr. Sinclair told of at least a dozen men he had known who had been devoured by them, and of a score of others he had tailored and repaired after the bears had left them for dead - surgery he had performed while on duty at the Chichigoff Mines.  Moreover, at Twin Glacier Camp, men are not permitted to venture off the premises without being heavily armed, and women and children never leave the camp without being accompanied by an armed male escort.  These Alaskan bears seem to be incredibly numerous.  They attain enormous size - often sixteen hundred to eighteen hundred pounds.  They are reputed to be the only animals on the American continent that will attack a human being without the slightest provocation.

After several wonderful days in the Taku River Country, an opportunity presented itself for me to return to Juneau aboard a fast motor boat.  I had no purpose in making the trip virtually back to our starting point, except I was anxious to se the result obtained in the numerous photographic negatives I'd exposed.  There, a resident photographer graciously extended to me the courtesies of his laboratory.  I had photographs of glaciers, icebergs and what not.  Everything came through the hypo about one hundred percent of anticipations.  When the local photographer saw my negatives, he picked out about two dozen of them and asked if I cared to sell them.  I had no desire to sell them, and told him so, but he insisted.   Finally he said: "If you will just sell me those negatives - name your price, and I'll pay cash." 

Just why a professional photographer, living within a few miles of scenes that he could very easily go out and photograph himself, should want to purchase a set of negatives made by one who is an amateur to those local conditions, seemed a puzzle. I asked the man to explain.  This he did, saying," You made a number of these pictures from floating ice, didn't you?". "Yes", I replied. "Well, don't you ever do that again.  I can't make negatives like that.  Furthermore, there isn't a photographer in all of Alaska who will go aboard an iceberg to photograph anything.  It's taking your life in your hands - and with buttered fingers at that.  Any iceberg is liable to flop bottom side up at any minute without the slightest warning.  If they don't turn over they may crumble up under our feet.  In either event you're a GONER!".

He explained further that the icebergs being fresh water ice falling into salt water, begin to thaw as soon as they fall from the glaciers.  The thawing occurs from underneath, so every berg eventually gets top heavy and rolls over.  I thanked the man for his kindly advice, and compensated him for the use of his laboratory by presenting him with a number of negatives which were practically duplicates of the others.  I got back to Taku Inlet that night aboard the United States Naval Minesweeper Swallow, which was going down there to calibrate a radio compass station.

From the Twin Glacier Camp, Wiedley and I had one more ambition to realize before we shoved off for the south again.  We wanted to take Igigihk into Twin Glacier Lake, a glacial pool up the Taku, where no motor boat had ever been before.  This lake is a huge glacial scar on the landscape fed by two enormous live glaciers, which are characteristically named -  Twin Glaciers.  The lake discharges into the Taku River through the Twin Glaciers River.  The latter stream is short and swift.  It drops to lower elevations very abruptly, and in mid-summer carries almost as much ice as it does water.

We left the camp at daylight - 3 o'clock in the morning, and shoved off up the Taku, with the little motor forcing the boat up against the swift current at just about one mile per hour.  We were constantly zig-zagging back and forth to avoid oncoming cakes of ice, or treacherous whirlpools; but eventually we managed to cover the few miles of distance that lay up the Taku between the camp and mouth of Twin Glacier River.  

We swung into Twin Glacier River.  We didn't go a hundred yards before we came to a rapid where the force of the current completely neutralized the power of our motor.  Great icebergs were constantly thundering down these rapids in an endless procession.  Any one of these bergs crowding Igigihk against another, or against the shore, would have crushed her like a grain of wheat between millstones.  There was no means of avoiding disaster except by artful dodging.  Nevertheless, with the aid of two Indian guides, motor, ropes, and poles, we conquered the rapids and putt-putted out among the ice floes of Twin Glacier lake about noon.

 
We spent most of the afternoon exploring the ice floes, studying the myriads of waterfowl that rode on every iceberg, taking photographs, climbing over the glaciers, and listening to the constant groaning, crashing , and creaking and grinding of literally tens of millions of tons of moving ice.  

Returning to the river, the descent of the rapids into the Taku, where it had taken three hours to get up, was made in scarcely more than that number of minutes.  Tense, and almost breathless minutes those were, however - for, we shot down the stream at express train speed - half expecting every instant to feel the bottom of the boat leave us as we struck some hidden rock, or to feel the tiny craft crumpled like an eggshell if we got caught between the ice masses with which we were racing.  Tame and roomy indeed seemed the Taku when we started down it toward our camp after that dash through the rapids!

Along this salt water river it was not easy to find a campsite as the light waned.

Two weeks later, after various and sundry experiences with everything from Woolly Winds to wetting waves, and from tides to ptarmigan, we were still in Alaskan waters, but had moved down the map about three hundred miles.  Scenery, icebergs, and glaciers had become almost a drug on the market.  We'd eaten salmon until we felt we never wanted to look at another pink fish - not even in a can!  Sorely in need of some fresh meat, we took our rifles, and started out to find it.  

Some Indians with whom I talked the evening before near the mouth of the great river where we'd made camp had told us: "Cross river. Plenty moose.  Plenty beeg grizzle bear too.  Climb tree.  Moose come. Bang!".  The old chief who did the talking spoke picturesque English, but his meaning was certainly clear.  So, very early that morning we took Ikigihk across the river, and into a smaller stream that drained out of an enormous muskeg.  We ascended the stream for several miles.  There was only about two feet of water under our keel.  

Presently the stream began to grow so shallow we could barely navigate.  Then we came to a beaver dam, and lifted the boat over it.  Above the dam there was plenty of water - thanks to the beavers.  Several beaver dams made the stream navigable for us right into the heart of the muskeg, or some six miles back from the salt water.  Eventually, however, we came to the head of the navigation, and made fast to a huge spruce tree - the only tree in the muskeg.  Climbing the tree for eighty feet, we scanned the muskeg with our field glasses.  For half an hour we pawed mosquitoes and moose flies, and looked for game.  A few minutes later we saw five moose - three of them bulls with legal hatracks.  They sauntered out of the muskeg into a thicket of bush about a mile away.  We promptly shinned down out of the tree.

Now , making a sneak through the marsh for a mile after game one is badly in need of for food sounds simple and easy.  But, in Alaskan muskeg - well, it's a man's job!  Picture yourself, if you can, sloshing along in a pair of clumsy hip boots in slimy mud and water up to your knees, and in coarse grass higher than your head. The grassis like so much rope.  It is matted and tangled and full of heavy brush that's too high to climb over, too rough to be broken, and too noisy to be tampered with.  Rain is coming down in torrents.  There's a cloud of mosquitoes trailing you, and kept from carrying you off in pieces only by the kerosene coating over all exposed skin.  You paw mosquitoes and swat moose flies, and unless you are a person of greater forbearance than Job himself, you'll develop a lurid vocabulary.

You fall down every hundred yards, and come up with twenty pounds of water in each boot.  By this time you are wet from head to foot, and have ceased to care how often you fall down.
You learn to sit down in the water and empty your boots by putting your feet in the air.  Then about every two hundred yards you come to a long lagoon.  There's no going around.  It's too deep for your boots and too wide to jump.  So, you splash right in, and your teeth rattle as you go down until the water touches your chin.  You struggle into the grass again, drain your boots out, and push on.  That's moose hunting!  I'm convinced the sport's been over-advertised.

We finally worked our way up to within a hundred yards of the point where we'd seen the moose enter the thicket.  There we came to a lagoon, and in prospecting its depth, I bogged down until my hat went adrift - rifle and field glasses held high overhead as I went out of sight.  Just as I came up for air Wiedley's rifle roared out three times in quick succession.  I crawled out of the water with the exclamation: "What are you shooting at?"  "A moose." he replied.  "He's down over there."
We spent the rest of the day quartering the huge animal, and portaging the meat through the muskeg to our boat.  Moosemeat was the mainstay of our diet for the next two weeks.  The value of this food soon showed in our physical condition.  We began to gain in weight and strength, and our energy for hard labor showed an appreciable impetus.

If tides are an important factor in the navigation of ships through the salt water rivier, they are of far greater importance to the navigator of a low powered craft such as ours over the same route.  A little experience soon proved to us that we could take our little boat from Alaska to Seattle virtually without power, or that we could detonate a day's supply of gasoline with Igigihk moving backwards like a crayfish.   

The sad error of underestimating the force of an opposing tide was illustrated to us one day after we passed out of Alaskan waters, and got down the coast of British Columbia into Canada.  Passing through a wide strait which we assumed to be almost tide free, we rounded a rocky point, and encountered a fog as thick as the  proverbial bowl of pea soup.  Our charts showed 50 miles of clear sailing dead ahead, so we took our course from the charts and the compass, and forged ahead with the motor churning full throttle.  For six hours we kept going, which at our normal cruising speed should have moved us about fifty miles down the map.  Along toward mid-afternoon the fog lifted, and to our dismay, there we were churning the water absolutely abeam of of the identical point where we'd encountered the fog.  We'd shot five gallons of gasoline and half a day getting nowhere.  A few minutes later the tide turned, and we began going with it at a prodigious rate of speed.  By watching the charts, and logging various points on the shore as we came abeam of them, we found ourselves flying down the salt water river at a speed of approximately 22 knots.  About 8 knots of this was boat speed.  The rest was tide.

Actually, it is "Sidney", British Columbia 

Late that afternoon we sighted an Indian in a motor boat fishing for halibut.  The boat was about half a mile off our starboard bow when we sighted it, and about that moment the Indian hooked a huge fish.  We could see him struggling with the monster, very distinctly through our field glasses.  We altered our course, thinking to get a better view, and possibly a photograph.  To our dismay, however, we soon discovered that the Indian's boat was at anchor in an 18 knot tidal current.  In spite of our best efforts Ikigihk went astern of the Indian's craft by just about half a mile, our best motor speed being useless for trying to get closer.  Sweeping on down the strait we could see the Indian still struggling with the fish.  We went out of sight behind a distant low-lying island without our being able to see whether he ever got the fish aboard or not.

Due to the lateness of the season, and the amount of time we'd spent in Alaska, we encountered much unfavorable weather.  For a week we sailed, or putt-putted in downpours of rain.  We hunted and fished in the rain, camped in the rain, and literally lived in the rain, until we almost forgot what it felt like to be dry.  When the sun did shine it was usually accompanied by high winds that took Igigihk southward under reefed sail like a migrating gossamer.  (a migrating what?)  If the rain stopped, and the wind blew, we were wet just the same - the only difference being that we were wet with salt spray instead of the rain.

For the sake of greater safety, and to help us keep our bearings through the seemingly interminable labyrinth of lace pattern waterways, we followed the commercial steamship lanes much of the time.  But, when our charts showed we could save  many miles of travel by taking short cuts back of islands, or through channels where only small boats could pass, we usually took the short cuts.  In exploring some of these diminutive passages, however, where we found our charts none to accurate, we got lost so often that we lost so often that we lost all track of the number of times.  Sometimes we'd be lost for a day or two, but we almost managed to turn up in the steamer lanes again - and invariably with a saving of many miles.  There was a great thrill to getting lost occasionally, and picking our way through titanic water-canyons - many of them utterly unexplored, and off the beaten trail where travelers never get.  

Ivory Island Lighthouse at the northwest entrance to Seaforth Channel

One experience in Seaforth Channel was typical of many others.  We had been lost for about three days, and on the third day,  without knowing exactly where we were on the map, we had jogged along for about 60 miles through a very narrow water-canyon  where the walls of perpendicular rock rose to ice-capped heights some eight to ten thousand feet almost over our gunwales.  A strong tide with which we'd been moving gave assurance we'd eventually pop out into the open waters again  And, we did.

The narrow channel suddenly terminated into a monstrous bowl-like lake of salt water.  Seventeen different water-canyons opened out of this lake like the spokes of a wagon wheel away from the hub.  We wee racking our brains over the charts, trying to figure out which of the water trails we should take, when a steamer came bounding out of one of the holes on the north side of the lake.  It was one of the Canadian Pacific passenger boats, and was going south.  The steamer ate up the distance across the lake like a buzz-saw eats through a board.  We shut down our motor, hove to, and watched the steamer.  It got to the other side of the lake, and dived into one of the water-canyons, and out of sight, like a rat going home.  We followed the ship and soon had our position verified on the charts.

Twenty days after we'd passed out of Alaskan waters we sped down the east coast of Vancouver Island on a mill race tide, rounded Fear Island Light House, and slipped into Victoria, provincial capital of British Columbia.  We spent a week ashore there in this picturesque city, which is a bit of England set down in the new world.  We had many friends there, and a glorious time.  The Canadian Government liquor stores supplied the drinks - and it didn't taste like horse liniment or varnish remover either!!  (Prohibition was still on in the US!)  It was a wicked temptation to try to smuggle a few bottles of this stuff with the Canadian seals all over the corks, across the sounds into Seattle; but out of respect for American law we sailed from Victoria with Igigihk as alcoholically dry as old man Volstead himself.

Can you read the little note in the bottom corner? :-)

We took nothing aboard but 20 gallons of gasoline, a few groceries, and shoved off into the Strait of Juan de Fuca.  The strait was lashed to a foam by an inshore breeze that was sweeping in against an outflowing tide.  Bobbing around like a cork, and getting thoroughly soaked (with salt water) we finally hove into the lee of the San Juan Islands, and camped  on American soil for the first time in two months.

1929

The following day we sailed down the Washington shore to Seattle, and tied up at Colman Dock.  It was within twenty minutes of time for the Federal customs House to close for the day.  We hailed a taxi, and hurried thither to report our yacht in.  When the necessary papers had been signed, e clerk said: "I'll phone Mr. Burton, one of the inspectors on the dock, and tell him you're on your way.  If you hurry, you'll be able to get your boat cleared yet today."

Returning to the dock, the tide had reached low level, and Igigihk was riding about 25 feet below the deck of the wharf against a spider-legged assortment of tarry, oil-soaked pilings.

 "Where's the yacht?" he exclaimed. "Where'd you come from in that peanutty little sea louse?" 
 "From Skayway, Alaska", we responded "and in from Canadian waters today."

This officer was diplomatic.  He didn't come right out and ask me what relation I might be to Ananias - but, the look I got! Oh! That look!  

The inspector then crept to the edge of the wharf, and took a squint down the greasy piliing which seemed to be the only route for making a closer inspection of the Igigihk and our cargo.  
"What have you got in those bundles?" he asked. 
"Just camping out", we replied.  
"No booze, no drugs, no Chinamen?" queried the official.  "Well, run along then."  That doesn't look like a smuggler's outfit to me!"

The End