Wednesday 12 September 2012

Flying Rowing

Chris Waite sent me a link to this, a video of a hydrofoil sculling shell built at Yale University a few years back.
It has a sliding rigger to keep the weight of the rowing still in the centre of the boat, so the foils don't rock up and down.
Very ingenious, but exactly the sort of thing that doesn't appeal to me in the least. It would be fun for a few minutes, but tire just a little and you are down off the plane and having to row against the drag of both foils as well as the boat.

1 comment:

Chris C said...

Maybe a boat with larger foils sized for flying at cruising speeds would be pleasant though? This one looks optimised for top-end speed and probably has smallish foils demanding a decent amount of effort to get flying. I can imagine that it would feel pretty magical flying over some small chop.