With 2.4 million subscribers watching online, 6 young men on the shore of the Missouri River built the raft they had designed at home in Massachusetts and set sail for their 5-day adventure in the style of Huckleberry Finn along the same waterways that Louis and Clark traveled over 200 years previous. The Boys With a Bus, as they were known from their Instagram account, have been covered in two previous Mountaineer articles. The first highlighting their talk with students at Big Sandy High School, which was arranged by Superintendent Schrock when they met on the river. The second, the first in this series, explored how a group of 6 young men went from documenting a school project online to setting sail on the Missouri with millions of fans watching their progress as they embarked on their 5-day trip.
One of the young men remarked that they had planned the float for 5 days, which was the only thing that went according to plan. The first hiccup came when the boys set their newly constructed 3-story tall raft on the river to experiment with the poles they would use for propulsion, an idea they got from a local while scouting launch points. The poles they were using to move the craft broke repeatedly, as the tethered craft refused to cooperate with their efforts to manipulate its position on the water. After destroying several of their push poles, the boys discussed the problem and agreed it was likely the tether that was the issue. They thought that maybe being tied to the shore was putting extra stress on the poles that would not be present during the voyage. They agreed to run to the hardware store and purchase replacements before launching. One of the young men explained their reasoning during the presentation to Big Sandy High School: It's better to fail on the river, having tried to accomplish what they set out to do than to fail on the shore without having tried at all. He went on to challenge the students to apply this way of thinking to life in general.
Their theory proved correct and soon the Boys with a Bus were briefly transformed into the Boys with a Boat. The first test they encountered, after the question of whether their poles would work on the river, came in the form of a bridge. Benjamin Rhodes Croft, who designed the boat, explained that there was some discussion during the building process as to how far they would push the dimensions of the project. He said his goal was to build it "...the biggest we could build it with the limitations we had. We wanted to build it big. David was like, 'We got to go smaller. Ben, we're not going to fit under the bridge.' And I just kept pushing it. We made it just barely under the bridge. It was a good, happy balance." In fact, they were able to fit under the first bridge they encountered (within hours of their launch) by taking town the 25-foot crows nest and squeaking under concrete structure. That was part of the initial design, as the crows nest was held aloft by tension cables.
The other major challenge popped up during the trip when their raft encountered submerged obstacles in form of rocks and other obstructions. The 3.5 ton boat, even traveling at a pace set by the current of the river, hit rocks with enough force to cause considerable damage to the boat. Benjamin explained that the design for the boat was modular, using plastic barrels underneath to give buoyancy. "It was a modular design, and the barrels are sitting in, what I would call, like cubbies. And essentially if you stress them side on, the cubby actually snaps. So the barrel rolled out from under the cubby, and then is coming up through the floor... it's just hitting the plywood. And so you suddenly have 440 pounds of force coming up through your plywood, and then boom!" David quickly chimed in remarking: "I think there's this one time where me and Justin were actually fixing one of the cubbies to put back the barrel, and then another one just pops out. We hit a big rock. It just pops out right next to us. And we go flying up a little bit!" Kevin Hart, another one of the young men, remarked that there was a time when Ben was walking and a barrel came up through the floor underneath him.
The group of young men became animated when discussing the challenges associated with repairing a moving raft on the river, sometimes doing so as more barrels were popping up through the floor around them. One of the boys compared the worst moments of scrambling to repair a sinking boat to the scene in Pirates of the Caribbean when Jack Sparrow steps off the crows nest of his sinking ship onto a dock. In total, 6 of the barrels broke from their "cubbies." The most that broke free simultaneously was four. Benjamin explained that "We could have lost half of them, and then we'd start to sink. It's a little sketchier than that, because the thing you really worry about is nosing in. If you start going down and you hit a rock or something in the water, you start taking on water. So really, I'd probably say we probably could have lost 30% of barrels and still be okay. But I think the problem is, if you're losing 30% barrels, you've hit something big enough that you are in real trouble."
The challenge of submerged obstacles altered the routine of the young men rapidly, as they began spending more time watching from their top deck and the crow's nest for possible obstructions in the water ahead.
Ben, who is taking a gap year between finishing high school and attending MIT, designed the boat using knowledge he gleaned online. He explained that YouTube is full of boat building videos, which he used as a starting point for planning the project. He did the actual design work in Fusion 360, Software for 3D design. When discussing the planning and math for how many barrels to use, he quickly shifted to talk of Archimedes and water displacement. It was tough to miss that he is an exceptionally intelligent young man. When I asked about what he would do different in terms of the design of the boat, he explained the cubbies would have been constructed with much thicker lumber, as they did not anticipate the degree of abuse they would face from underwater obstacles.
Watching the 6 young men as they spoke to the students in Big Sandy, the thing that stood out to me most related to the obstacles they faced. It was obvious that they enjoyed various elements of their trip, like the camaraderie, the joys of exploring the Missouri River wilderness, and the headiness of internet fame. However, the greatest excitement came out when they discussed overcoming challenges on the way to reaching the end of their journey. Their pride at keeping a sinking ship afloat and traveling in the footsteps of Louis and Clark was palpable as they shared their adventure. Their experience seemed to me an embodiment of the spirit of those who carved out a place in the Montana prairie.
In the next, and final installment of this series I will look at the high points of the trip as the young men described it. That article will be coming in a few weeks. To read the stories you may have missed, check out our website: https://www.bigsandymountaineer.com.
