yeeee haaaaaaaa!!!!
thank you Brian!
I even figured out how to run sshfs on my own!

for anyone who happens upon this thread with the same problem here is what I did:

sshfs <ip of computer to save to>:<path of directory to save to> <mount point>

(sshfs basically mounts a remote directory)

then

fsarchiver [options] savefs <mount point>/<filename> <device to save>