Greg Kolodziejzyk wasn’t able to achieve his goal of pedaling his special high-tech boat around Vancouver Island last month, but that doesn’t mean he is giving up on his larger dream of taking it across the Pacific Ocean.

Kolodziejzyk, along with partner Jordan Hanssen, set off from Comox on Oct. 31 in the human-powered craft, called WiTHiN.

But mechanical problems thwarted their adventure only three-and-a-half hours into the journey.

“We were near the Denman Island ferry at Buckley Bay and my partner was pedaling,” Kolodziejzyk said in an interview from his home in Calgary Friday. “I had just finished my first three-hour shift so Jordan was in the cockpit.

“He wasn’t aware of how close we were to the Denman Island ferry, and when he did, he put a pretty aggressive back spin on the pedals and it broke.”

The crucial drive component that broke may have been small, but it was impossible to repair it out on the water, so the pair found themselves stranded.

“We had a paddle on board and we contacted the ferry and the captain allowed us to use the ferry dock,” he said. “We spent the night on Denman and in the morning we got somebody to tow us across to a boat ramp near the ferry terminal.”

It was an inglorious end to an adventure for which Kolodziejzyk had been training for some time, but he’s not disheartened. Anything but.

“When you attempt something that has never been done before, you are going to be learning a lot from trial and error,” he said. “I’m very happy that we were able to learn about this problem with the gear box before my Hawaii crossing.”

That Hawaii crossing, called Pedal The Ocean, will see Kolodziejzyk taking his boat solo.

“This boat was specifically designed to cross from Victoria to Hawaii in June and this was one of the sea trials we organized to test the boat,” he said.

He conceded it was unfortunate however, that more testing couldn’t have been done prior to the truncated Vancouver Island adventure, but Kolodziejzyk said it simply wasn’t possible.

“We had just finished the boat the week before we took off to go to the Island,” he said. “We just didn’t have enough time to test the boat. The lakes are frozen here in Calgary right now and we had to rush the whole thing.”

Kolodziejzyk bills himself as an endurance athlete and he has the record too prove it, having set the world record for distance covered in a pedal boat in 24 hours. That record, 245.16 kilometres, was set in another pedal boat, Critical Power Two, around a circular lake course in Whitefish, Montana

He also holds the land record, having pedaled 1,041 kilometres on a race track in Eureka, California in 2006.

“I have many years of training under my belt and for me it’s not that hard,” he said.

The former owner of a software company who sold out to Adobe Systems 15 years ago, Kolodziejzyk said he did so because he felt he needed to change his focus.

“I needed to get into better condition physically,” he said. “I needed to lose 50 pounds. I entered a triathlon and got into that whole challenge. Then I entered a dozen of the Ironman races. I became fascinated with endurance and human power and using it to go, to move. I wanted to explore that more and that’s when I got into looking at human-powered distance records.”

Noting that the current obesity epidemic costs the Canadian health care system over $5.8 billion every year, Kolodziejzyk said he is sending a message with his adventures about Canadians’ sedentary lifestyles, which many cite as a prime cause for the rise in obesity rates.

“Anything we can do to bring to the forefront the fact that using human power is kind of cool sends the right message,” he said. “It attracts a lot of attention and that aspect really appeals to me.”

Another aspect he likes, he said, is the technological side, noting his boat was custom built to endure the rigors of a solo Pacific crossing.

“There’s a separate compartment in the stern with a hatch protecting it from the cockpit,” he said. “I can crawl back there and sit up, cook, look out or use the computer. There are solar panels and a water maker. It’s very comfortable.

“We are doing things that have never been done before. The challenge is how to build an aerodynamic vehicle, gear it, and eke out every single watt of power from a human being and convert that to forward energy.”

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