To clone a repo to a remote machine that has no access to the source machine, my recipe is:

• clone locally into a temporary location with the '--no-open' option
• send this file to a temporary location on the remote machine
• login to the remote machin
• clone the copy of the temporary clone to the final destination, again with '--no-open'
• remove the two temporaries

See more details in a slightly longer text I just added to the FOSSIL forum: https://fossil-scm.org/forum/forumpost/4e51f8f957