Episode 55: Drew Rollert (Wada Hoppah)

Meet Drew Rollert! He's the founder of Wada Hoppah, an all-electric, wakeless, shallow draft water shuttle and commuter service coming soon to the Charles River (and Watertown Square!). In this conversation we dig into the history of ferries on the Charles, what inspired him to design (an award-winning) modern ferry for the river, all the challenges, thinking, and planning that goes into this kind of thing, and we end with some thoughts on Watertown's water future.

Find out more about Wada Hoppah as Drew plans to get things rolling this summer: wadahoppah.com

Transcript

Matt: 0:07

Hi there, welcome to the Little Local Conversations podcast. I'm your host, Matt Hanna. Every episode, I sit down for a conversation with someone in Watertown to discover the people, places, stories, and ideas of Watertown. This time I sat down with Drew Rollert, who is the founder of Wada Hoppah, so I’ll let him introduce himself and we'll get into the conversation.

Drew: 0:25

So my name is Drew Rollert and I'm the founder of Wada Hoppah, which is an all-electric, wakeless shallow draft water shuttle and commuter service for the Charles. 

Matt: 0:34

Awesome. We will definitely get into that because that's interesting and unique right now. But I always like to go back in time and get a little bit of the background of the person. So maybe the first thing, did you grow up in this area? Did you grow up around the Charles River?

Drew: 0:46

Actually I didn't. I'm from the Cape.

Matt: 0:47 

Okay, around water.

Drew: 0:48

Oh yeah, grew up sailing, boating every day. It was just kind of like the normal thing. I didn't really think anything of it. I wasn't like a fisherman or a lobsterman, et cetera, but being on a boat to go different places every day was fairly normal. Obviously, when you look back, not a lot of people have that, but I was lucky enough to have that. So, from the Cape, local guy, went to high school, went to college, went around the world for a little while, different cities, countries around the world. Ended up coming back here and have just, I don't know, loved staying here and want to see this area improve, I guess.

Matt: 1:19

Yeah. What drew you to Watertown?

Drew: 1:21

There was an apartment that was at the time that was for rent that I really liked and I'm like man, it's close to the center of the town, I just love the interior of it, how it looked. And I'm like at the time I was living in Needham, which was you know like 10 minutes away. And it's like, all right, it's basically the same thing it's, you know, it's completely different now. And so that's what it was. It wasn't any like altruistic drawing of it, the water thing was not even involved at the time. So that came after about a decade of living here, you know, just walking down to the river, running around the river, cause I do that fairly often, almost like every other day at least I'm running or walking around the river. So that's a lot of time with a body of water.

Matt: 2:01

Yeah, but not as, as we'll get into, not as many people learn about that body of water as you have. So was that something like when you were growing up boating and such, did you study the boats or was it just kind of like a recreational activity?

Drew: 2:14

It was mostly recreational. There was some competitive sailing, but it wasn't, I wasn't going pro or anything. So I didn't really experiment with boats. I'm from a big family. My brothers were just always monkeying around with stuff and I was more watching, I guess, than participating, because half the time they're monkeying around with stuff they're basically getting in trouble. I didn't always want to be getting in trouble like they did. So anyway, just watching and learning and watching and learning and you know, processing that type of thing. But I mean, if you told me, you know 10 years I would be in this field, I would have just absolutely laughed out loud. Like did not picture anything with boats at all. 

Matt: 2:52

So what were you doing 10 years ago? 

Drew: 2:53

I've been in software for quite a while, making software. And you know it's not tangible like a boat is. You’re talking lines of code and user experiences and online stuff and hardware. With a boat it's a completely different ballgame. You can touch it, feel it, morph it. I mean you can clearly morph it in a software setting, but it's, you know, the tactile capacity is really pretty cool. I didn't realize I would like that aspect of it as much as I do now. Turning off a screen after you've kind of accomplished developing something, it's got a different type of satisfaction than physically doing something with your hands.

Matt: 3:29

So how did you make that jump from software to making a boat?

Drew: 3:33

It's really just because I got annoyed at something. My friend, a good friend of mine who I live near, gave me a Red Sox tickets. And he said these are season tickets, we're right behind the dugout. I have three this week, we can't be here, so take them. I was like, great thanks, you know. And he said just bear in mind I could give these to a lot of people, so please make sure you go. And I was like, absolutely. And had a couple of friends over to, you know, pregame a little bit on my deck. Ordered an Uber. Guy came to the end of my street. I could see the car about a block away and then just canceled and I was like I don't know what that is. Ordered another one and the algorithm just linked me straight to that same guy, but now he was twice the price. And I'm like, okay, I know what's happening. Guys, we're going to walk down to the square. And so they were fine with it. We're going to jump on the 57, go to Kenmore. Got there, I looked at the schedule. Okay, there should be one here in about 5, 10 minutes. That goes by, nothing. All right. 15, 20, nothing. 30, 40, and I think around 50 minutes, one bus showed up in a space that like three or four should have shown up. And at the time, like the crowd was just slowly growing, and growing, and growing, and growing. And finally, when this one bus showed up, there were just too many people to get on. And I don't know if you've been on the 57, but it makes a lot of stops and on a hot summer day, being shoulder to shoulder with people on a stinky bus is not ideal. So I was like, guys, I got to ask you, you know, we're going to be fighting for space. Do you want to do this?

Drew: 4:57

And it was a resounding no. So I was like, okay, I can't convince these guys to get on a bus, I won't be able to get them on a bicycle. And I was just like I don't think this is working. So I'm going to take the hit. I'm going to have to throw these things away, unfortunately, and just count on getting gobs of grief from my buddy. And I was walking across the bridge from the yard in the square and I was just staring at that dock being like, why is there no boat? It's the center of Watertown. There's a beautiful boat landing, you know the ornate concrete, and it's been there for a long time. And it just started gnawing at me. And of course my buddy comes back, you know, I didn't hear the end of it for at least six months. 

Matt: 5:37

You didn't research the game so you could tell him what happened? 

Drew: 5:40

I should have. I really should have. It fueled me to be like, if this guy is ever going to give me tickets again, I have to look into this a little bit more. And I have some rowing friends and I said, hey, you know what's the deal, do you know anything about this? And there was like little snippets. Like there's a portion that kind of doglegs near Watertown where it gets super shallow. You know that's probably one reason why. Another one was, you know, we don't know why that boat landing was put there. So it just started, kind of this chain of events where I'm looking at why, why, why, why, why. And then, you know, I would start doing research here in the library. The Watertown Historical Society, Joyce was a savior, Joyce and crew, because it was multiple people. You know we were looking through magazines or newspapers every week of the Watertown, the two newspapers, for six years. Not six years of research, but six years of looking through all that they had, to find out any info. Why did Watertown never have a boat? It's on the water, it's a river. Like Boston's always been a port city. Somebody had to have at some point been like I'm going to go up to Watertown with my boat. Where's the newspaper? Where's the newspaper?

Drew: 6:48

Finally, we come across one picture of this boat called the Elk. And there was some small snippet like it ran from this time to this time. It was the first and only female captain in Boston who ran it, which was pretty cool. I think her name was PJ Tish, I think her name. It was very cool. I mean, I was expecting something smaller. It was like a 40, 50 person boat. It's on the website. It was an old Navy launch that they built in Newport and they just stuck it on the Charles to see if it would work. And it worked downstream, but as it was getting closer to like  Newton and Watertown, it basically hit the shallow issue and had to stop. And there was a dock at that time where CRI is, that was called the Faneuil Street Dock. And there was also a train station right there before they tore it down and made the Mass Pike. So the boat would go up, turn around at the Faneuil Street Dock and then go back to Boston, but it never truly made it to the square. So once I found out there was a boat, I said okay, who built the landing, this beautiful landing in the square. Did more research, more research. These are like months at a time, so I'm skipping.

Matt: 7:50

And just to get people, where's the timeframe, that newspaper article, where's that timeframe in Watertown history?

Drew: 7:55

That was 1935. The Chronicle, I think it was the Watertown Chronicle, did a small blurb on the front of the paper. So Charles Elliott, the Harvard architect who designed the Charles River Basin Esplanade, he made four mother landings, that's what he called them. These were boat landings. And if you go to the Back Bay there's three of them. Commissioner's Landing, which is just behind the Hatchshell, Gloucester Street, and Dartmouth Street. And then the fourth is nine and a half miles up river in Watertown. So I found that out and I'm like these things are nice. I mean, they made them just after, you know, the depression before World War II. I mean money was tight. So how did he get permission to make these overly expensive boat landings? It turns out him and Olmstead were in charge of it. He wanted to get people down to the river to experience it, whether it was boating or just fishing or swimming. You could swim back then. But he wanted the interior of Boston and Cambridge connected by boat. So he said I want to put one the furthest point up river that we could, which was Watertown, because it was tidal, still tidal at that point. And right by the dam is where it kind of petered out, got too shallow to go anywhere. So he said I want to put one there and it's going to be a carbon copy of these three in the Back Bay. So if you go in the Back Bay and you go out on the Gloucester street landing, which is very ornate, and the Dartmouth street, Commissioner, you'll see it. It's a copy of the one in the back bay.

Drew: 9:16

And when I found this out, I'm like so he meant, this guy designed everything that we run around and walk around and, you know, spend time on, especially in the summer, he wanted, he had a vision, like a hundred years ago, that people should be able to get around. Because cars weren't around so there was just railroad and some horses, carriages. So he wanted that form of transportation from the beginning. And we just slowly, you know, as cars got more popular in the late 30s, ‘37, ‘38, people stopped taking the railroad and they stopped taking the water transportation. And then it basically just became an empty river, which is too bad, but that's how the whole thing kind of started. I started a little bit more history, a little bit more history, more, more, more, more, more. And eventually I just had enough proof that this existed. I mean, we found three other ferries that were on the Lower Charles in that time as well. The Elk was just the biggest. We're like okay, so this used to exist. People used to go from Boston to Cambridge with a boat or to Kenmore to Harvard Square with a boat. They used to go from the west side North Station to Kenmore via boat at the time. And those three boat landings were really instrumental. I mean, I've got pictures of them with hundreds and hundreds of people on them just looking around and boats like lined up on them. And so it started out just with history, I guess. And then I put two and two together and I thought, ok, well, why can't we revisit this?

Matt: 10:36

And so, just for people, the dock that you're talking about is the one right in Watertown Square, underneath the bridge that connects over Galen Street, correct?

Drew: 10:43

Exactly, exactly. By the way, do you know there used to be an island right there?

Matt: 10:48

Is that where sometimes you'll see the ducks stand when the water is low, or is that something different?

Drew: 10:52

That's a little different. So if you look at the bridge, if you're standing on the dock, and you look at the middle part of the bridge, when you go about 15 feet east-southeast of it, there was a dock that at the time they sold tobacco and gunpowder on. And it was right there in the middle of the Charles and the mill was like a couple hundred feet or yards up from that kind of where Sasaki used to be. And so what would happen is the women would bring the flour to mill and the guys would go down and buy tobacco and gunpowder at that island. They put it on the island in case it ever blew up, because they didn't want it on land when it blew up. So the guys would smoke around gunpowder. Not a great idea, but anyway it was there for a long time and then the women and then afterwards, when both parties were satisfied, they went home. So there was a little island right there and kind of to the right of where that dock was, but it's all gone. So that was like late 1700s.

Matt: 11:45

Right, things have changed. Yeah, I remember like talking with Gideon, planner for the city, about like the rivers and stuff that used to flow in different parts.

Drew: 11:52

He knows a ton. And he really also knows his zoning clearly, it's his job. So, yeah, I definitely know, Gideon. Good guy.

Matt: 11:59

Cool. So I mean, we could talk about history for a while here. Maybe we'll get back to it. But so then, how did this step go from thinking about why isn't there a boat to oh, I'm going to make a boat?

Drew: 12:09

So I mean, like I said, that six months of me getting grief from my buddy, I can attribute very heavily to being like this wasn't just me. I mean, there were a lot of other people who couldn't get on that bus and some of them probably stayed for the next one. I mean I don't know how many were going to the game, but some probably stayed. Who knows were they going to their job or to visit somebody or whatever. But you know, 10 or 15 people bailed and canceled their plans or whatever they're planning on doing. So right around that point and I started getting more information on the fact that there used to be transportation, I said, ok, well, why can't we, I don't know, build something? And I just started like early on, just bouncing it off my friends like, hey, if we had a boat in the square, theoretically, that would take you to Boston and back multiple times a day, would you take it? And it was always yes. Absolutely, that'd be really cool because it's beautiful out on the river. And on top of it it goes to the dead bullseye center of the square. Like so many other cities do not have that artery, and so it's always like, yeah, yeah, like all right.

Drew: 13:08

So we started mucking around with ideas and I said, okay, well, it has to be shallow draft, Because it won't be able to get to the square, and if it can't get to the square I might as well not have it. So, okay, we can make a design that's shallow draft. And then it's like okay, well, there's a lot of rowers in the spring and the fall and if we're around them I want it to be wakeless. So, or at least as much as possible. And I asked a rowing friend of mine and he said oh, I know this guy who builds all the coaching launches on the charles that chase the rowers and they shout commands at them. They're called stillwaters. I don't know if you've ever seen them. They're about 25 feet long and they have no wake.

Matt: 13:42

I guess I've never noticed that, but yeah.

Drew: 13:49

That's the reason. So when I found that out, that we could make a design that was shallow draft and wakeless, I thought, okay, so during these periods fall and spring we should be able to operate in a tandem balance with the rowing community. Because, you know, upriver there's a lot of rowers at times. And electric, I just I'm not a big fossil fuel guy. I don't like think the future is about burning diesel, burning gas. And I said it has to be electric. Oh, and it has to be able to get under every one of the nine bridges on the way to TD Bank North. So there's a fourth one, but technically let's just say three. So we kind of started pooling ideas and you know, we made one design and it was really just too ferry looking. I was like there's nothing sexy about this boat at all. If this thing is going to be dead in the center of the square picking people up, I want it to look good. This is our one chance to make something look really nice.

Drew: 14:30

And then six months go by and we, you know, design, design, design, scrap, scrap, scrap. And then we made the second one. The second one started getting a lot sexier, a lot cleaner looking. It was kind of like a Chris Craft. You know, the lake boats that have the sloped back to them, slope stern, they call them dovetails. I was like, oh, this is really pretty boat and this is a, you know, it's a lake. Those Chris Crafts were made for lakes and rivers. I was like, okay, so then there's version two. And then we started getting a lot more attention for people being like oh, now it's not just transportation, now it actually kind of looks nice. Now I want to be on it, just to be on it. And then a couple more months goes by and we start refining it, and refining, and refining. Eventually we ended up getting to the design that we have now. So that whole process, from getting stiffed with the Red Sox tickets to where we are now, is just about a year and three quarters.

Matt: 15:17

Yeah, and who's this we? Like how big is your team?

Drew: 15:19

It's a small, it's a small team. There's only four of us. So the builders. We had a captain at the time. He's no longer with us, so we have a new captain. And so the team's very small. I mean and then there's the guys in the shop, but I'm not counting those. And once we get the boat wet, get it in the water, then we have to get more people. Because you have to have more captains, you have to have first mates. You know you have to have people who are kind of concentrating on fleet management, all the political stuff. There's a ton of political interest in the Charles. Luckily it's all environmental which we fit into. But you know people want to know about it. What are you doing with it? What are your plans for it? You know we don't want this. You know the biggest thing from the environmental groups was like OK, it's electric, that's fantastic. That means no hydraulic fluid, no gas, no diesel, nothing that could be spilled in the Charles. And right now there's probably six, 700 boats on the Charles that are all diesel and gas. So when they fill up, you pull that nozzle out too quick. Let's just say your hand is still on the handle. You know all that could go right in the water and we want to decrease that. So electric boats would take us away from that because there's little to no fluid on it whatsoever.

Matt: 16:24

So what's the process of like getting permission to do this type of thing?

Drew: 16:28

Well, there's multiple. There's permission, that you have to get, and then there's permission you want to get. Permission you have to get, you know, you have DCR, you've got the Coast Guard. Those are regulatory for any commercial ferry service. Then, on top of that, because this is a custom design. It's custom designed for the Charles and because of that, any custom designed boat that's built and made in the US has to go through the Coast Guard. Especially being electric, which is considered, you know, very new by Coast Guard standards. For a custom design boat that also happens to be electric, they want to be involved from the design all the way through the physical building of it. Because the Coast Guard has, you know, the regulations. They want to make sure, whether it's a diesel or electric boat, ferry, that it hits these regulatory things. DCR also, you know, manages the river, the docks, the landings, things like that. So there's those things.

Drew: 17:19

And then, of course, the things that you want to do, which is engage the community, you know. So at the beginning I thought, okay, I'm going to reach out to these people, should be quick. It was not quick. And because there's a lot of people you know, Boston's got 750,000 people and a lot of them live around the river. I think it's the technical number was something like at least 30 to 40 percent live within a mile or two of the river, something like that. And employers, you know the Charles River Watershed, Charles River Conservancy, Esplanade, you know those right off the bat. Then you've got the universities and you've got, you know, all the environmental groups. And then you've got DCR, and so it's just involving groups and letting them know like we are not coming in here like a bull in a china shop. We want to make this a balance. We want you to be able to be happy with this. And we, you know, listen to everybody, met with them. You know, is this what you like? What can we help with? So on and so on.

Drew: 18:08

Oh, CRAB, which is the Charles River Alliance of Boaters, again, that's another big organization. So on and so on. Rowing clubs. And after about a year of just back-to-back meetings like that, we have the vast bulk of the groups lined up saying, okay, this guy's willing to create something that could benefit residents. You know, this is a commuter boat, but it'll do so in a way that works with everybody and not just like, well, we're going to do it anyway, so whatever. Which is important. I don't want to have people not liking this because it's not environmental or because it ruins something. I want it to work in balance or in harmony with the existing groups. So it took a long time to do that.

Matt: 18:49

Yeah. And was there one piece of feedback that was the most interesting that you hadn't thought of, like an angle that you're like oh, that's really interesting?

Drew: 18:55

I didn't expect the interest level to be as high as it was, as early as it was. I mean I stopped counting, for Watertown, at least 3,000 or 4,000 signups. I just stopped counting. I haven't even looked in maybe about eight months, nine months. I think with how bad Boston traffic is, Watertown it's not physically part of Boston but it's really close, experiencing the exact same traffic, I was not prepared for people to be like well, can we have a couple boats, four or five boats? And I'm like, can we just get one? Let me just get one. And when we get one we'll get two. But scaling up, I guess another thing. There's nobody right now, at least the United States, let alone Massachusetts, that has made an electric shallow draft wakeless ferry. No one. Like I don't care how much money you have, and I've talked to DOT, Department of Transportation and other groups that have money that could very easily say like we want 10 of these things if they wanted. There's nobody to call and say, hey, can you make this? They don't make them. I wasn't really prepared for that. I mean, there's boat builders on both coasts. You know been there for 50, 80 years, whatever. But the bulk of them are doing diesel and the bulk of them are not doing ferries. And on top of them the ones that are doing ferries are doing ferries that just look like ferries. They look kind of like you know something you take to like Nantucket or the Vineyard. Kind of like blocky steel, kind of you know 70s looking. And on top of that the drafting is really more important. I guess that's probably it.

Drew: 20:21

The shallow draft angle became the most important thing that I think has allowed us to go, well, there's rivers all over the country, in all the capitals. And if we can get into 17, 18 inches of water we can open up new routes, not just in Boston. There's the Mystic after this. You know, there's areas of the coast that were too shallow but could become new routes. There's areas like that all over the country. We don't need to be building stuff to go to the Vineyard. That's a different shape, different design and it's a way different project. The production facilities have to be massive for stuff like that. I mean, Boston's made lots and lots and lots of ships over the years, so there's no reason we can't make the best electric ferries in the country in Boston. I'd like that to be the case actually. I'd like when somebody says, Seattle or Washington DC says you know what, we have to retire some of these diesel ferries that we have. Who can we call that makes the best damn ferries that are fossil fuel free? Boston. Get that guy on the line. I want that to be Boston. But anyway. So I think maybe the shallow draft thing.

Matt: 21:22

Yeah, what does shallow draft mean? Just so we have that out there.

Drew: 21:25

So able to get into extra shallow water with passengers, with heavy batteries, with the weight of the boat. So you have to have a design that displaces water enough. So in this case, for a 40 person, all electric, the boat is 60 feet long and it's about 19 feet wide. So it's kind of like a dart. And once you get over that shallow area that's fine, not an issue. But that's a lot of weight to be getting over what is essentially like a big puddle. You could walk, like right near here, you could walk across the Charles and not get your shorts wet. Legitimate. You know the basketball court is? Right there. Walk right across in the middle of spring, you will not get your shorts wet. And especially with the drought like last year, river got lower, so it's probably hovering around 19, 20 inches right now. And if you can't get to the square, like I said, what's the point of the boat? So the draft, that's what that means, able to get to extra shallow water, which opens up new routes. By the way, the Mystic has the same conditions as the Charles. Quite a few bridges that are low. Rowers, shallow depths. Can't take a ferry to Assembly Row. Say I live in Assembly Row or that area and I want to go to the Seaport. I live on the water. I can't take a boat there? It's the same conditions that we have in Watertown, same thing.

Drew: 22:36

Anyway, there's something that people should know about. There's the Hatch Act. The Hatch Act prevents you, I think it was written in like the 80s, prevents you from buying a boat abroad and just slapping it in commercial, like a commercial sense for, you know, servicing of goods or servicing of people in the US. You can't just buy something and import it over here and you know, be like we have something now. And at the beginning we kind of thought like hey, you know, there are electric water shuttles and ferries in Amsterdam, in Norway, in Venice, Cannes, France, Copenhagen. You know why can't we buy one of these and bring it over here? Nope, because customs will be like turn around. So that's something to know about.

Matt: 23:14

It's good to do that research first.

Drew: 23:15

Oh yeah, they're not cheap.

Matt: 23:18

Yeah, so how are you actually going about building this boat then?

Drew: 23:21

So our shop is in Concord. Obviously it's inland. It's not ideal for more than maybe one or two of these boats. Because once they're done you have to put them on a flatbed and you have to get one of those wide load groups together. You got to plot out how you're going to get to the water, which is a real pain and it's costly. It's not cheap. So for boat number one, boat number two, we're okay, but after that we have to have the production on the water. So if we're able to scale up and show that this works. You know the goal is to say, okay, we're in Massachusetts, I want these built in Mass. I don't want them built in Alabama, shipyards in Alabama or Louisiana or where Newport News or wherever the other shipyards are, Connecticut. I want them built in Mass. Like I want to see that little metal sticker or plaque on the sidewall that says built proudly in Massachusetts. So we have to find a facility that we could scale up that's on the water, and there's not a lot of those in Massachusetts that are left. So we're on the hunt. We have a couple of places that are good fits but we haven't pulled the trigger yet and that could change any minute, literally any minute.

Matt: 24:24

So what's the timeline right now on boat one though?

Drew: 24:27

June. So we have a pre-prototype already being built right now. It's not the 40 person, it's a 10 person. We already have most of the hulls done. Should have everything kicked out by late May, say like first week in June. And then we have to get the Coast Guard registration inspection done. Once that's done then the boat is good to go. We're going to do some trials of it before we take any passengers. But ultimately the goal is to have something mid-June for Watertown. And it'll have a bathroom. So we're going to go from the square to Fenway, drop people off, you know, for games and concerts and stuff. And then we'll go to TD Bank North, same thing, games and concerts. Zip across to Kendall. And then, because of the batteries are smaller on this boat, there's about 75 miles worth of batteries on this one boat. So to get the most out of that 75 miles, you know going from Watertown to TD Bank North is 10 miles, roughly 10 miles. So when we get down there we'll be doing lots of routes like from North Station to Kenmore, Kendall to Kenmore, just to get as many people out on the water going back and forth. We will keep going to Watertown and back, but hopefully.

Matt: 25:30

You’ll be zigzagging your way.

Drew: 25:32

Zig, mostly downstream, mostly downstream. I mean, the goal is to showcase look, this boat with 10 people is not a far cry from the bigger one. We just have to say, okay, it can get in 18 inches of water, it can be wakeless, it can be all electric. Test, test, test, test, test. You know, this is while the other one gets built and then pop out the big one next spring. I just couldn't go another year without anything. It's driving me bananas. Yeah, it's hard to put into words. I hear from people a lot, when is this happening? When is this happening? And I'm like, it takes a long time to build a state-of-the-art boat. Like this is no joke state-of-the-art.

Matt: 26:10

Oh yeah, you won an award, right?

Drew: 26:12

We beat six countries that already have electric water shuttles on them. They're already operating on them. We beat India, Norway. Was it New Zealand? I don't know if Finland was in there, but three others. Because they liked the design, specifically that it enables new routes. There's deep water ferries that have been around forever. You know Nantucket, the Vineyard, blah, blah, blah. But the Charles River has always been the biggest artery into and out of Boston and you should be able to get from Kenmore to Kendall by boat. Like why the hell can't we? You've done this route I'm sure. You either have to walk around the river. You know, from Kendall you go over the bridge up to Kenmore. That's probably a 25 minute, 30 minute walk. You can take an Uber, again 15 minutes, 20 minutes, depending on traffic. From Kenmore to Kendall is an eight minute boat ride. Because you're not going around the river, you're going through it, right. So there's a lot of stuff that, like, I think it's going to be a game changer for transportation in the area specifically.

Matt: 27:04

So from Watertown Square to TD Garden? What's that time?

Drew: 27:08

So there's express runs. And then there's you know when we stop at different docks along the way. So if we make stops, I think it's probably, we would do Herter Park in Brighton, Kenmore, Back Bay, Kendall, and TD, that would be another 10 minutes, but should be around like 40 to 50 minutes down there and back. Which is going to be a little longer than certain forms of transportation, but it's going to be nicer. There's literally never traffic. You don't hear people honking and see them flipping you off. You have a bathroom. You know the number of times I've sat on Storrow Drive going to a Red Sox game watching an empty river. No parking fees, you're not spending gas, there's no tolls. So it'll be a couple of minutes, but that's purely because there's a speed limit on the river.

Drew: 27:52

I don't know if you know this. Upriver from the BU Bridge is six miles per hour. And if you go down to the North Beacon Street Bridge, you look down there's a little placard, from the BU Bridge down it's 10. And that was put in place, those rules were put in place a long time ago when the tech didn't exist to make stuff wakeless. Because they were worried about the bridges, they were worried about the coastline. And you know these big boats that have a lot of wake, these monohull boats that plow through and you just see like wave after wave after wave and that hurts a bridge after a while. Shoreline, same thing, degrades it. But now the tech has actually gotten to the point where we can say we can go fast and still be wakeless. So if we're able to ever notch that up a little bit, the time will just shrink. I could demonstrate it, literally put somebody on a boat this summer, and say I can go there 20 miles per. I'm not going to do this, but I theoretically could go there 20 miles per hour and you won't see anything but a ripple. Now, like I said, we're not going to do that. We're going to adhere to the speed limits. But I could see, you know, them saying okay, well, if you have a certain design and you can prove that that works and you have a, say, 500 meters of open space in front of you. The captain says I don't see anybody. They look, we have an AI object recognition system on this as well. They verify that against that. If you have a certain amount of distance in front of you without anything and you're wakeless, I feel like you should be enabled to go faster. But you know, these take time. Things take time. First things first, get people to Red Sox games, maybe put a beer in their hand as they do that. So we'll be applying for a liquor license and we’re going to do some like special stuff. But just get people used to saying, hey, I could take the 57, I could take an uber, or I could take the boat. That's the goal starting. 

Matt:29:35

Yeah, or I could hop on the hoppah. So Wada Hoppah. What's the name, where?

Drew: 29:40

We're trying to come up with all sorts of names and I just hate names that are too uppity. And we're just tossing around ideas and I was like water. You know it's a Boston accent. Wada Hoppah. And the way when you say that, Wada Hopah, it makes the sides of your mouth crease upward, which kind of makes you, not giggle, but like smile a little bit. That's really really hard in terms of marketing to make a name that makes somebody physically smile just by saying the name. When I said that I'm like Wada Hoppah, I'm like wow, that's kind of. And people some people hated it. They're like this is the stupidest name. Boston shouldn't have accents. You know, we heard that plenty of it. My former captain was like hate it, hate it, never going to be on it. I'm like listen, that's fine. I don't know what I'm doing. I've never built an electric ferry, but nobody else has. So somebody's got to like set the standard. And why the hell do we always have to be so serious? Like calm down, it's a boat. You shouldn't look at a boat and be like that stresses me out. That's literally the opposite of what you should look at a boat with. I look at that boat and go, man, that's going to be a nice way. I want stress-free, I want to get point to point, no issues. Let everybody else be on a crowded road or paying gobs of money to, you know, sit in traffic. Nope, I want to be on a boat.

Matt: 30:53

Yeah, and it's not as kitschy as like a duck boat, right? 

Drew: 30:55

Do you know the story behind the duck boats? What they were used for?

Matt: 30:59

Go ahead.

Drew: 31:00

They were old World War II landing craft. When I was growing up, a guy he was a really wealthy guy near me, had one of them personally and he had a little island off the Cape that he would, I remember this. I was on a bicycle he would just cook down the road, down the ramp, straight into the water with this thing, like at 30 miles per hour, 35 miles per hour. Splash, and then to his island. They are massive targets. So you look at kind of like, okay, how many people could we bring into the water, like the Marines to the beachfront. And they’d say, okay, 50, 60, whatever it is. So that was a good start. The problem is they're really slow, they're really unwieldy. Like turning just basically around like that, is like a 10 minute process. So if you have a machine gun firing at you, you know something that's not agile is not a good design. So they built all these things and like, yeah, these things are sitting ducks. Then they're like maybe we shouldn't build any more of these. But they're good for tour boats. Everybody likes going from like the road into the water and then back out. It kind of makes them feel cool. But there's also the tour boat, the Charles River tours that take people out and there's now a Mai Tai boat, like a party boat. So there's other commercial operations on the Charles. They're mostly for tourists. I want something for residents. We live here. I go downtown, just like you, often. There should be something for us.

Matt: 32:14

Right, so what can people in Watertown expect in the next like three years out of this project?

Drew: 32:19

Some really cool stuff. There's a pipeline of cool stuff that we have set up. Obviously, it all starts when the boats hit the water. At that point it triggers everything else. So the goal you know, just start saying, hey, this summer you want to go to a show or a game at Fenway or TD? Boom, you got a boat.

Matt: 32:36

What's the process of that? Taking a ride. You just show up at there? Is there a schedule you look at? Do you have to reserve it? How’s that go?

Drew: 32:41

So because this boat is only 10 people, we'll just do the reservations online. I don't think walk-ups will really work, because we're probably going to be sold out every trip. I mean, 10 people is not a lot. You know five couples. So I would expect you'd book something you know, maybe a couple hours ahead of time, if not a day ahead of time. Get your slot, go down the dock in the square, or, if you live in Brighton, Herter Park, or, theoretically, we could pick you up at CRI in Newton, because that's a public dock. And I want it to be app driven. I don't want anything like paper tickets. Go downtown and you see all the stuff that they haven't adopted yet for.

Matt: 33:14

Just get the QR code. 

Drew: 33:15

A QR Code. I was using those like eight years ago. That is not what I think of like tech. I think of that as actually kind of like old tech, to be perfectly honest,. And so anyway, but adopting the infrastructure for ticket purchases, for games, all the rest is to combine things and have it be app driven.

Matt: 33:34

So we would have the Wada Hoppah app, we'd select it. You'd have like four different slots you could pick from in a day or like what's how many trips do you think it would be making at first?

Drew: 33:42

I think we calculated there would be at least two trips end to end a day. Maybe one in the morning, one in the evening, if not more.  But the bulk of them, like I said, from North Station to Kenmore. They'll probably be about 10 to 12 back and forths, round trips. And what was the other part of that? The?

Matt: 33:58

Yeah, so just like they would use the app, they would come in and select a slot.

Drew: 34:01

Yes, use a slot. You don't have to pick a seat. But we don't want anybody to be have to be standing. That's one of the things, and you know this taking the trains and buses, they'll let you on even if you don't have a seat. And I don't care if that bus takes a half an hour, standing sucks for a half an hour, especially at the end of your day. You know that's not going to happen. So the ratio it'll be one person to one seat. You won't choose the seat, book the time, you know one way, round trip, whatever it is. Pay online. 

Matt 34:27

How much is it going to cost? 

Drew: 34:28

So I think I want it, no matter what, I want it to be somewhere around 15 to 20% less than what an Uber would be to that same destination. So if an Uber takes you from Watertown to Kenmore, say like 24, 25 bucks. I want to be like 18, 17, 18. That's where I'm pegging the price point is based off of, okay, can you get somebody to drive you there? Yeah. Okay, we'll also take you there, but you're not going to sit in traffic on a boat and you'll have a bathroom and you'll actually enjoy yourself and be able to have a beer. Can't do that in an Uber. Plus it'll be less expensive. So 17, 18 bucks to Kenmore. From TD Bank North to Kenmore will probably be six, seven bucks, real cheap.

Drew: 35:06

There's one thing that most people don't realize. Electric ferries, electric boats because they require like 50% less maintenance, are less expensive to run. Therefore the ticket price should be less expensive. And if they're not, you're just kind of not treating your customers well. But you look at the boats in the harbor and all the rest of this and they have a price point because they have like 70% of their money goes into engine maintenance. The boat breaks down, you're like an island. And so those diesel engines require a ton of maintenance and all that money that they get from tickets goes into that. Plus they're steel, they're rusty, you know, and maintenance and all the rest of that. So we should be able to optimize the ticket price considerably less because of it being a new vessel.

Matt: 35:49

Right, cool. Well, I think we've hit on a lot of things here. Is there anything else that you want to specifically bring up that you feel like we haven't hit on?

Drew: 35:56

Well, I mean, you know, one of the side things I'm just trying to really rally people behind is the future of Watertown. You know, I want to keep living here. I love the area, I love the people, I love where it's going. Clearly, traffic is not something I appreciate. But I think maybe one of the things I want people to realize, or to at least stand up for, is to say we have a river that goes into the center of the town, past Arsenal Yards, past a giant chunk of Watertown to the center of Watertown. We don't just want water transportation, we actually should require it. The name water is in the town. We almost by default need to have water transportation. Like that should just be a given. It should have been a given a hundred years ago and it should have stayed going that way. But I feel like, if anything, I just want people to say, like you know what, we shouldn't just be land based transportation. We're physically on the water, we have this capability and it should be the future of the area. To be perfectly honest, I mean.

Matt: 36:53

Yeah, what's your utopia 20 years from now when you see the water transportation in Watertown?

Drew: 36:58

In Watertown specifically?

Matt: 36:59

Yeah.

Drew: 37:00

Well, if that dam comes out, and I've heard that it's supposed to, that should give us and I've done some depth testing. Actually from that dam to Waltham, at least all the way to I think it's Bridge Street, where the old loom buildings are that are offices, now tech offices. So we've done some depth testing. Utopia is while we are cleaning out the stuff behind the dam, you know there's like decades of gunk and stuff that's going to come down river, we actually dredge either the portion that leads up to Watertown, where the shallowness issue is, and after the dam, so that we can get all the way to the furthest end of Watertown by that area with a boat. Now, if that area, that one mile, maybe 1.4, if that 1.4 miles of water were to be, say, two to three feet, you could double the size of that boat. And to take, you know, 40 people and 80 people is a lot different. So right now the 40-person boat with the batteries it has should be able to take 400 to 650 people a day to and from. Say, like 350 cars worth of people. If you double that, you start having a real impact on traffic and all that CO2. So I guess Utopia, they dredge that, we can get to the furthest end of Watertown with water transportation.

Drew: 38:16

And then it just becomes like doesn't even become a second thought. They're like, well, we can Uber, we can drive, we can take a bus, we can just take the boat. You know, just forget about it. And at some point they're probably gonna forget about us and me and all the rest of it. They're like, oh yeah, we've always had this. I mean, you remember before we used to have Uber. There was only taxis and that sucked, right. But now some people are like I've only had Uber my whole life. I hope it gets to that point where, like I've only had a boat my whole life. That's going to be utopia. And at some point I have a feeling you'll see the Charles being more than just rowers and a couple of pleasure boats. You know, you'll actually see utilitarian type of methods to get back and forth. We'll see. Knock on wood.

Matt: 38:58

Yeah, a lot of work still ahead, but. 

Drew: 39:01

It's starting. 20 years people won't think about this anymore. Maybe even less than that, maybe 10. Once that thing is just reliable and they can count on it, it'll fade from just being its novelty and it'll just be another day-to-day thing, which is really cool. Who knows if I'll be around or doing that stuff. I mean, I don't know. 10 years is a long time. It's a lot of boat rides. It’s a lot of people. My gosh, 640 people a day times 30 times 12. 230,400 a year. That's just with the 40-person boat. Times 10 years. Two and a half million people worth of trips.

Matt: 39:36

That's a lot of people moving.

Drew: 39:39

Yeah, that's a lot of people moving. So, anyway, thank you for having me, by the way,

Matt: 39:42

Yeah, and where do you want to direct people to to find out more about you and the Wada Hoppah?

Drew: 39:48

The domain is wadahoppah.com. That's where we're going to take tickets this summer. Instagram, same thing wadahoppah. We're on Blue Sky, not Twitter, same thing, wadahoppah. We don't run a lot of social stuff so. Don't really have that much time. But Instagram and website and Blue Sky. Yeah, please, any questions, any ideas, I love ideas because the Charles has a lot of room for activities.

Matt: 40:12

Yeah, yeah. Well, thanks for sitting down to share your thoughts and stories and, you know, maybe we'll do another check-in after you've moved 2 million people.

Drew: 40:22

That would be awesome, man. That'd be awesome.

Matt: 40:24

So that's it for my conversation with Drew. You can find out more about him and Wada Hoppah, where he mentioned. I'll also put those links in the show notes. If you like the podcast and you'd like to hear more episodes, head on over to littlelocalconversations.com. You can find all the episodes. You can find upcoming events, such as the next live Creative Chats event at the Mosesian Center for the Arts. You can sign up for the weekly newsletter. And if you want to help support keep these conversations going, there's a support local conversation button and any amount that anyone wants to pitch in is greatly appreciated. I'm going to give a few shout outs here. I want to give a thank you to podcast sponsor Arsenal Financial, which is a financial planning business here in Watertown owned by Doug Orifice, who's a very committed community member. You can listen back to my Watertown trivia episode I did with him to celebrate the sponsorship, learn some fun facts about Watertown That'll be in the show notes as well. And if you need help with some financial planning, reach out to Doug and his team at arsenalfinancial.com. I also want to give a thank you to the Watertown Cultural Council who have given me a grant this year to help support the podcast, so I want to give them the appropriate thank you, which is, this program is supported in part by a grant from the Watertown Cultural Council, a local agency, which is supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency. Find out more about them at watertownculturalcouncilorg or massculturalcouncilorg. I also want to give a shout out to a couple of promotional partners. The Watertown Business Coalition, a nonprofit organization here in Watertown, bringing businesses and people together. Find out more about them at watertownbusinesscoalition.com. And Watertown News, which is a Watertown-focused online newspaper. Follow them to find out lots more going on in Watertown. Find them at watertownmanews.com. So that's it. Until next time, take care.