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"  At the 8 \u00BD-mile mark, Jim Campbell is at the head of the pack, in control of the race. The two-time defending champion has every reason to be confident\u2014he knows the course inside and out, he owns the most time-tested vehicle and he still has a few tricks to pull out, including a parasail, which on this windy day could be a potent weapon. But when he grabs his remote control to adjust the speed, Campbell, his boat and its cargo\u2014400 pounds of lead-acid batteries\u2014suddenly stop. &amp;quot;I think my nylon gear picked up static when rubbing against the plastic hull of the canoe and my electronics died,&amp;quot; he says. Campbell does the only thing he can\u2014he whips out his emergency jumpers and charges 12 volts back into both of his motors. Then he adjusts his speed, dropping from about 4 knots (4.5 mph) to just less than 3 knots (3.3 mph). The race is no longer a sure win. The Wye Island Marathon is located on the east side of the Bay Bridge by St. Michael&amp;#039;s, Maryland, where the Wye River meets the Chesapeake Bay. It began in 2001 as a place for Campbell to show off his eCanoe, a small boat he designed that runs on lead-acid batteries and has patented dual steerable motors for slow speeds. Campbell first built the boat for practical reasons: &amp;quot;My shoulders and arms aren&amp;#039;t what they used to be,&amp;quot; he says, &amp;quot;so I looked [into developing] electric power for small boats and canoes.&amp;quot; Eventually, Campbell turned his hobby into a business\u2014eCanoe now sells electric boat parts like fused battery jumpers, DC extension cables, motor mounts and rails that hold batteries to the boat to electric boat enthusiasts. The market for such parts is exceedingly small, but growing, Campbell says. Still, he does not expect to quit his day job practicing medicine anytime soon. View Wye River Marathon in a larger map In the first year of the race, there were only a handful of entrants. Since then, the race\u2014which goes from St. Michaels, Md., around Wye Island and back again\u2014hasn&amp;#039;t attracted much more attention. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s backwater at the moment,&amp;quot; Campbell says. There&amp;#039;s one predominant reason for the race&amp;#039;s slow growth: Captaining an all-electric boat for 23.82 miles without a charge is a serious DIY challenge. &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s why it&amp;#039;s called a marathon,&amp;quot; Campbell says. &amp;quot;If you can finish, it&amp;#039;s a feather in your cap.&amp;quot;  In this year&amp;#039;s race, held on October 2, high waves, winds and technical difficulties kept two of the four entrants from ever leaving shore. The other two were left fighting just to finish. This year, Charlie Iliff wasn&amp;#039;t in it for the feather\u2014he was out for the record-breaking win. Iliff&amp;#039;s ICE ElectroShell holds the course record at 2 hours 25 minutes 47 seconds, a speed that earned his boat its own &amp;quot;extreme&amp;quot; class in 2007. The ElectroShell is a modified eight-man rowing monohull that has twelve 65-pound, 6-volt, deep-cycle batteries arranged in two 36-volt banks. The engine has a rated input of about 4.5 kilowatts, or 6 horsepower. The top speed of the 58-foot-long, 1200-pound boat would beat a world-class, eight-man rowing team. When it set the course record, its average speed was nearly 8 knots (9 mph); a new arrangement of the motor and batteries had it topping out at 14.4 knots (nearly 17 mph).  Just a week before race day, the ElectroShell team ran into problems. While testing the new setup, the shell rolled violently\u2014&amp;quot;first one way, then the other,&amp;quot; Iliff says. &amp;quot;We found that it had broken two small steering links, allowing the lower unit to go all the way around while turning the prop.&amp;quot; They replaced the broken parts and got it going again, but the handling suffered. &amp;quot;The main problem was that the motor is attached to the boat, thus it tries to turn the lower unit against the steering system,&amp;quot; Iliff says. &amp;quot;We reinforced obvious weak spots in the steering system and I decided to try to race,&amp;quot; he says. This was &amp;quot;not a great decision.&amp;quot; On race day, the team installed the 12 batteries, taped their water-resistant covers closed and hauled the loaded boat into the water. At that point, Iliff accidentally put the boat into forward gear with the throttle open. &amp;quot;It immediately broke the remaining weak link in the steering, drove the steering arm into the steering stop that we had installed an hour before, and violently rolled to the right until green water entered the driver compartment,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;Subsequent tests showed it too crippled to repair, not to mention electricity going around wherever it pleased\u2014sitting in the seat and touching the hull resulted in a tingle.&amp;quot; Rowing shells are not designed to excel in the two-foot swells that were rolling on the open part of the course on race day (the ElectroShell enjoyed relatively calm waters when it set the speed record)\u2014but, then again, they&amp;#039;re not made to glide with a propeller, either. Iliff noted the obstacle that ultimately thwarted him from reaching the starting line this year was actually the result of compounding problems. &amp;quot;One was an engineering mistake, and the other operator error,&amp;quot; Iliff says. &amp;quot;Since I was both the engineer and the operator, try as I might I haven&amp;#039;t found anyone else to blame.&amp;quot;  After the temporary electrical setback, Campbell cruises into the lead once again, maintaining a steady three knots as he rounds Wye Island. But he is not alone. By the time Campbell regained power, Jay Bliss from St. Augustine, Fla., caught up and positioned himself just behind Campbell, where he proceeded to shadow him for miles. Bliss is a competitor to worry about. The retired English teacher and life-long tinkerer has been building boats since he was nine or ten years old. His electric racer is a 16-foot-long craft called Elektra. The boat has a long narrow bow (&amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s what I call a 1920s destroyer bow,&amp;quot; Bliss says) that slopes down and forward from the gunnels with a wood finish as well as a low freeboard, for the possibility of severe weather. Inside, Elektra is minimalist\u2014Bliss carries no gear, not even a seat\u2014which makes the boat extremely lightweight. But it is the engine that will ultimately give him an edge in the race. To power Elektra, Bliss went to a local automotive recycler and bought a full battery pack from a 2007 Prius, which provides him with &amp;quot;astonishingly high voltage,&amp;quot; Bliss says. The 168 cells of the Prius battery rig put out 270 volts. Bliss uses a DC switching power supply that converts 260 volts to 27 volts, which runs a 24-volt standard trolling motor. &amp;quot;Because the Prius automobile is not 100 percent electric,&amp;quot; Bliss says, &amp;quot;I wanted to let it rest periodically.&amp;quot; To do this, he carries a couple of Wal-Mart batteries and physically switches the power source every hour. Bliss continues to trail Campbell as they enter the last, rough four miles of open water. Two-foot waves, 17.4 knot (20 mph) headwinds and plenty of splash pounds the two men as they motor along into the race&amp;#039;s fifth consecutive hour. (&amp;quot;A day later, I was rerunning the race in my dreams and the boat went down in the water and we never came up,&amp;quot; Bliss says. &amp;quot;One of those two-foot waves became a three-foot wave.&amp;quot;) With one mile to go, Bliss opens up, showing off the high voltage in his Prius battery. He soon overtakes Campbell and slowly lengthens his lead. Campbell&amp;#039;s eCanoe has nothing left to give.  In the end, Bliss wins the race at 5 hours and 50 minutes by about 200 yards, making this one of the closest races in Wye Island Marathon history. &amp;quot;We could have beat him if the electronics had stayed with us,&amp;quot; Campbell says. But if Campbell and Bliss are expecting a rematch next year, it is unlikely they will be the only competitors. &amp;quot;I suspect next year there will be a lot of nice advances in outrunner and in-runner motors,&amp;quot; Bliss says. &amp;quot;That will provide more horsepower and more efficiency.&amp;quot; Electric boat marathoning is, after all, a nascent racing league where a little innovative DIYing can dominate over established design. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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