McRoberts thought of using a bateau. Bussey ran into someone who knew Andrew Shaw, a 25-year-old Charlottesville carpenter who owns a bateau. Bussey contacted Shaw, and a strategy emerged.

Shaw plans to put in his boat at Riverside Meadows, a grassy area just upriver from Pony Pasture Rapids on the river’s south bank. That’s the only place open enough to get the 43-foot-long, 7-foot-wide bateau from a trailer into the river, Shaw said.

Shaw and his four to six crew members plan to pole the boat about 3½ miles, much of it through rapids, to Reedy Creek, a south bank spot where there is truck access. The bateau crew will pick up the materials there and ferry them north to Texas Beach, almost directly across the river.

The ferry job probably will take several trips. Then Shaw and his crew will pole the boat back, against the river and its rapids, to Riverside Meadows.

“It’s hard, but it’s doable,” Shaw said.

Shaw made news in 2012 when he and friends took a trip commemorating an 1812 river and overland journey by Chief Justice John Marshall. Shaw and his crew poled the bateau up the James from just west of Richmond to close to the West Virginia line, hauled it across the Allegheny Mountains, floated down the Greenbrier River and shot the rapids of the New River.