Pedal Powered Boats

[beppe]

Originally Posted by Rick Willoughby

The rudders are so-called "dipping" rudders. They are only immersed when required for turning. They normally sit up out of the water and are just immersed when turning or course correction is required. For a full turn the whole rudder is immersed. If it is only a course correction then just a tiny portion is immersed. The rudders have a preset angle of attack roughly set at the maximum L/D ratio for the particular foil.

It means I do not have the continuous drag of the rudder. Depending on the size of the rudder it could be worth 0.5kph.

Rick W

Wow! now that's a nice concept, so you have the maximum turning efficency just when you need it. I was wondering how this could apply when you need also maneuvearbility. It seems to me that you need to vary the rotation of the rudder when the boat turns to maintain a correct angle of attack, if you need to minimize the turning radius. See in the attached image what I mean: I manage to turn in these narrow channels with the rudder assembly I showed before.
Beppe

[MLampi]

Originally Posted by Rick Willoughby

...
Here is the worlds fastest pedal canoe:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R83c_gKTGY4
How does this fit with your constraint. Why not just standardise on one of the Hydrocycle drives as it is better engineered than the twisted chain:
http://www.hydrocycles.com/learn.php

Rick W

Rick,

How on earth do you know that the Youtube video that the above link points to is the world's fastest pedal canoe?

First on all, it is certainly not a canoe. I'd venture that it is probably a WaveWalker, which is by no means a canoe.

Secondly, that boat isn't even as fast as a paddled canoe, unless you are talking about one of those slow, heavy cargo boats people take on vacations for fishing.

The last I heard, the Hydrocycles folks weren't selling their drives without a boat attached. It's a pity. Those drives are certainly nicely engineered, and seem to be much better built than the SeaCycle drives.

Michael Lampi

[MLampi]

Originally Posted by Rick Willoughby

For starters I have attached a video of me doing a slow pass in Mike Lampi's Cadence on Lake Union near Seattle. I have also attached the performance data from a couple of hours in the boat. At agressive cruising of 150bpm the boat holds around 10kph. Top speed achieved in a sprint is 16.8kph. There was a bit of slop when this was achieved so the aging engine might nudge 17kph in smooth water.

Rick W.

Rick didn't mention this, but that boat is also very much a heavy weight version of the Cadence. A normal Cadence is about 10 pounds lighter and I think would have helped Rick achieve a better top speed.

Michael Lampi

[Guest625101138]

Originally Posted by MLampi

Rick,

How on earth do you know that the Youtube video that the above link points to is the world's fastest pedal canoe?

First on all, it is certainly not a canoe. I'd venture that it is probably a WaveWalker, which is by no means a canoe.

Secondly, that boat isn't even as fast as a paddled canoe, unless you are talking about one of those slow, heavy cargo boats people take on vacations for fishing.

The last I heard, the Hydrocycles folks weren't selling their drives without a boat attached. It's a pity. Those drives are certainly nicely engineered, and seem to be much better built than the SeaCycle drives.

Michael Lampi

Mike
Because it says so - why else. I am just repeating the totally unfounded claim made with the video. Both you and I know it is nonsense. I was hoping someone would pick up on it.

I know you are impressed with the drives and I also believe they are well engineered. Much superior to twisted chain in my view.

Did you see that Hydrocyles has picked up Pedalos as a test mule. I think they may have recognised the merit that length offers.

They offered Greg K a full boat to do his 24 hour effort last year and predicted he would not get anywhere near the distance he achieved in the kayak hull. I believe they felt their boat was superior but I am supposing now realise length counts.

Not sure if you visit Greg's blog. He has been doing 1000m sprints in 4 minutes. Still not Olympic class for a K1 or skull but not bad for a 48yo.

Rick W.

[beppe]

Hi Michael
as you know I like very much your boat, but browsing through your website I didn't find the performance data.
Since the google search gives

'Open Water Cycling - The fastest production pedal boats on the planet'

I'm really interested about them!

Immediatlely after I wrote this post I found

'The FASTEST production pedal-driven watercraft on the market today!'

as the opening catch-phrase of the Hydrocycles home page.

Really, I don't doubt youre claim is founded, Michael, but I believe we need to discuss some hard data here in this technical forum...

Best regards
Beppe

[Guest625101138]

Originally Posted by beppe

..........

'Open Water Cycling - The fastest production pedal boats on the planet'

I'm really interested about them!

Immediatlely after I wrote this post I found

'The FASTEST production pedal-driven watercraft on the market today!'

as the opening catch-phrase of the Hydrocycles home page.

Really, I don't doubt youre claim is founded, Michael, but I believe we need to discuss some hard data here in this technical forum...

Best regards
Beppe

Beppe
Mike will probably make his own response but I think I can contribute here.

Mike markets the Cadence and I believe he can rightly lay claim to the fastest production pedal powered boat. He provides a huge amount of performance data on his own web site including this blog:
http://snorlax.lampi.org/blog/index.html
that is regularly updated.

The very first post on this thread has performance data on the Cadence using a 1951 vintage engine that was/is somewhat out of tune.

Mike is one of the few people regularly racing a PPB against other forms of human propulsion.

The Hydrocycles claim relates to Pedalos. The basis of this information is wrong on two counts. I do not believe a version of the boat is in production yet and the 24hr PPB distance record is now owned by Greg Kolodziejzyk, set last year in a 2-man kayak hull and planning to exceed later in the month in Critical Power 2.

I believe the Wavebike was faster than the Cadence but it is no longer in production.

With all these things it is buyer beware. Most people wanting a pedal boat are not going to be looking for performance in the first instance. Just that they can get horribly disappointed when they actually get alongside a kayak or rowing scull.

The first year I did the Murray Marathon I was occasionally heckled by onlookers who accused me of cheating because it looks so easy. However I am under no illusion about the amount of effort I need to put in to be competitive with a well-paddled K1 or OC1. People unfamiliar with K1s, OC1s and sculls find a reasonable pedal boat like the Hobie exciting. The advantage is that there is no skill or unusual muscle development involved in its operation compared with the paddled/rowed forms. So if people have a go they get interested.

The Cadence is very similar in performance to my OC1 with small prop and about 1kph slower than V11A for same engine at 130W. I have hard data to demonstrate this and the calculated data gives the same result. In the same way, I can calculate you require about 40% more power to do 10kph than a Cadence requires. Doing 1000m in 4 minutes would require a very powerful rider in any catamaran.

By the way, Mike is the only person I know who has tried both a Cadence and a Hydocycle so he is one person who can talk with authority on the relative performance.

Rick W

[alexlebrit]

I'm wondering if we could agree a few terms when talking about PPBs. Different people have different wants from their boats, and sometimes I know I find it confusing identifying what they're talking about, and what I can apply from other people's boats to any design of my own.

Broadly speaking, I reckon there's the following categories of boat.

• Racing - Fairly obvious, it's a boat designed primarily for high speed
• Cruising/Touring - Similar to racing, but with a few more creature comforts
• Working - A platform for another activity - eg fishing, hunting, photography
• Expedition - Plenty storage space, capable of multiday trips
• Multi-powered - Combining pedal power with another means of locomotion - sail, electric etc

But that's just my impression and there's obvious overlaps, and please feel free to completely rewrite everything. Personally I'm interested in a versatile boat that I can use for multiday expeditions, and it might even have dual propulsion, and so this will effect the design of any boat I'm building.

Anyway, just some thoughts.

[Guest625101138]

Beppe
This is a video of the Hydrocycle Wavewalker in action:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsdBPC4T6wU
Mike Lampi provided the video and was able to take a test ride on the same day the video was taken. As far as I know the boat has never been placed in a competition against paddled craft like K1 or OC1.

This video that I linked to earlier is a Wavewalker:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R83c_gKTGY4
The rider clearly believes the advertising and is the sort of owner who ends up disappointed when they get in a competitive position. But if a misleading claim helps sell something to the ill-informed so what, it's a sale. The money is in the bank.

You see outlandish claims - here is one of the more recent ones; post #13 here:
http://boatdesign.net/forums/showthread.php?t=23665
So what - you can waste a lot of time challenging nonsense and it is not productive.

I would like to see the individual who could punt these along at the claimed top speed:
https://www.msu.edu/~pengchun/
Not impossible but would be an Olympic class cyclist.

Here is another:
http://www.inventist.com/index.php?o...ask=view&id=23
17mph may be possible but I determine one would need to be extremely fit and tied down to apply greater acceleration than 1g to the aparatus.

You will waste a lot of time if you set out to challenge all non-supported claims.

Rick W.

[ASM]

Rick or anyone else.
It looks like the link to the chinese drive unit is promissing, though not for sprinting purposes. Has anyone used this unit ? Seen this unit ?

Sandor

[Guest625101138]

I have tried one mounted on a lightweight rowing scull.

It is geared to protect the internals. I could manage 13kph as I recall on a hull that would nudge 18kph with a good drive unit. I was spinning out at maybe 140rpm. This is well past my peak power cadence. I expect that you would need to be able to spin to maybe 200rpm to get the claimed 18kph. Not impossible but need to be well trained.

It is not very streamline either. It carries the same dimension full depth. Roughly 45mm thick and maybe 200mm long. It has 45 degree wedge shape as the fore and aft fairing.

Finally the prop is a bit rough. If it was trimmed and profiled it would do better.

The one good thing is the price and I do not know of any failures but use is usually low.

The longer boat in this clip is the one I have tried:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adS1ywFsFkE

There is another one used here:
http://www.wisil.recumbents.com/home...wisil/main.asp

Rick W.

[ASM]

Rick
You really think I can do soo much more in rpm ? haha don't think so.... anyway, would the drive unit be simply redesigned with a GRP enclosing instead of the steel one ? this makes it lighter and the streamline could be improved.. the price is what striked me in the first place as I am not that handy that I can create one myself.... I have contacted them, no reply yet.

[beppe]

Originally Posted by Rick Willoughby

Beppe
Mike will probably make his own response but I think I can contribute here.

Mike markets the Cadence and I believe he can rightly lay claim to the fastest production pedal powered boat. He provides a huge amount of performance data on his own web site including this blog:
http://snorlax.lampi.org/blog/index.html
that is regularly updated.

The very first post on this thread has performance data on the Cadence using a 1951 vintage engine that was/is somewhat out of tune.

Mike is one of the few people regularly racing a PPB against other forms of human propulsion.

The Hydrocycles claim relates to Pedalos. The basis of this information is wrong on two counts. I do not believe a version of the boat is in production yet and the 24hr PPB distance record is now owned by Greg Kolodziejzyk, set last year in a 2-man kayak hull and planning to exceed later in the month in Critical Power 2.

I believe the Wavebike was faster than the Cadence but it is no longer in production.

With all these things it is buyer beware. Most people wanting a pedal boat are not going to be looking for performance in the first instance. Just that they can get horribly disappointed when they actually get alongside a kayak or rowing scull.

The first year I did the Murray Marathon I was occasionally heckled by onlookers who accused me of cheating because it looks so easy. However I am under no illusion about the amount of effort I need to put in to be competitive with a well-paddled K1 or OC1. People unfamiliar with K1s, OC1s and sculls find a reasonable pedal boat like the Hobie exciting. The advantage is that there is no skill or unusual muscle development involved in its operation compared with the paddled/rowed forms. So if people have a go they get interested.

The Cadence is very similar in performance to my OC1 with small prop and about 1kph slower than V11A for same engine at 130W. I have hard data to demonstrate this and the calculated data gives the same result. In the same way, I can calculate you require about 40% more power to do 10kph than a Cadence requires. Doing 1000m in 4 minutes would require a very powerful rider in any catamaran.

By the way, Mike is the only person I know who has tried both a Cadence and a Hydocycle so he is one person who can talk with authority on the relative performance.

Rick W

Thank you Rick
I believe this thread you opened here gives us the unique opportunity to set some records straight; there are numbers around the Internet about the performances of pedal boats that are just ballpark figures or worse.
In my opinion we should rely on

1. experimental measurements,
2. calculated theoretical data and
3. the experience from races and regattas

and reach eventually some simple numbers on which we can agree...
I have some reliable experimental data I believe from prevoius post exchanges are roughly in accordance with yours and with those form Michael, maybe we can work out a synthesis.
I'd be happy to provide them to anyone interested.
Since a comparison is difficult, I believe that from a practical point of view the length of the boat can be a useful concept for a classification, because it is the most important factor that affects the usability of a boat (e.g. the possibility of transporting it on a car etc.).
Maybe a simple (?) table reporting drag and mechanical power needed at significant speeds (e.g. 4,5,6,7 knots) and including boat length could be a nice output of this effort.
Best
Beppe

[beppe]

Originally Posted by alexlebrit

I'm wondering if we could agree a few terms when talking about PPBs. Different people have different wants from their boats, and sometimes I know I find it confusing identifying what they're talking about, and what I can apply from other people's boats to any design of my own.

Broadly speaking, I reckon there's the following categories of boat.

• Racing - Fairly obvious, it's a boat designed primarily for high speed
• Cruising/Touring - Similar to racing, but with a few more creature comforts
• Working - A platform for another activity - eg fishing, hunting, photography
• Expedition - Plenty storage space, capable of multiday trips
• Multi-powered - Combining pedal power with another means of locomotion - sail, electric etc

But that's just my impression and there's obvious overlaps, and please feel free to completely rewrite everything. Personally I'm interested in a versatile boat that I can use for multiday expeditions, and it might even have dual propulsion, and so this will effect the design of any boat I'm building.

Anyway, just some thoughts.

Hi Alex
your classification is interesting; what's strange is that PPBs' performances of several categories of the boats of your classification are much closer than what happens in many other fields; e.g. in rowboats.
For example a pedal powered catamaran I designed as a leisure boat in the nineties won unexpectedly the World Championship in 1999; the boat is admittedly not the fastest boat in the world, but she is not as far as expected, considering that anybody can ride it without any training and is reasonably easy to transport and operate. Please find the details at

http://www.openwaterbike.com/the-idea/the-story

if you are interested
This could be because PPBs are not yet so specialized, no dominant design have emerged yet, and they have huge margins of improvement, as for example were the bicycles back in the 1880s.
This is what makes them so exciting to work on...
Best
Beppe

[Guest625101138]

Originally Posted by ASM

Rick
You really think I can do soo much more in rpm ? haha don't think so.... anyway, would the drive unit be simply redesigned with a GRP enclosing instead of the steel one ? this makes it lighter and the streamline could be improved.. the price is what striked me in the first place as I am not that handy that I can create one myself.... I have contacted them, no reply yet.

If you go to the WISIL site listed previously and look at the next boat page you will see Warren faired his leg by fairing over the existing casing. Made it slightly bigger but more streamline. This is much easier than total rebuild.

The best improvement is likely to come from a new prop or just reshaping the prop.

The unit is not the best but it is a good price and fine for a first time boat.

Rick W

[MLampi]

After making a mess of things I finally have some data recorded with a Garmin Forerunner 305, its heart rate monitor and its cadence sensor while engaging in a couple of races.

The race I was in Saturday was not one of my better ones, though the time of 2:22:xx was fairly close to my time in 2004 of 2:25:xx in a 10+ pound lighter boat without outriggers. Weed consumption this year seemed to be worse, though some of that was probably just my imagination. The currents, waves and winds were pretty mild over all.

Rick, would you like to see the data?

As an aside, I have worn the Forerunner and HRM belt while doing my morning runs for nearly two months, and can offer that data as well if it might help compute engine parameters.

The SportTracks power plugins don't seem to do the trick in calculating my actual power output.

Michael Lampi

P.S. The photos I took can, as always, be seen at the Sound Rowers web site's photography page along with basic GPS speed/position performance graphs.

P.P.S: The Pedalos was built almost in time for the 2000 Hydrofest, where it was merely demonstrated as a concept boat. I don't think it was ever planned to be a production vessel; rather, it was supposed to be used in setting the 24 hour HPB record.