Bicycle Pontoon Boat

Man rides bike boat across San Francisco Bay

...Judah Schiller, of Mill Valley, who just may be the first person to ride a water bike across the San Francisco Bay, pedaled his pontoon bike boat from Port View Park in Oakland to Pier 1 in San Francisco in about an hour.

"No buses, no taxis, no cars, no pedestrians," Schiller, 41, said to a throng of media he invited to his San Francisco arrival in order to publicize alternative forms of transportation. "If someone gives me a better way to get across the bay on a bike, I'd like to see it..."

Schiller's public relations team, which organized media at his departure in Oakland and his arrival in San Francisco as well as a tagalong boat with his own video and still photographers, insists he's not trying to sell the $1,000 to $2,000 bike boats manufactured by just one company in Italy. Nor, do they say, is his design firm planning on designing or manufacturing its own bike boat...

 

If he's not trying to sell the pontoons, he's trying to sell himself. He should do it in normal conditions, when it isn't a flat calm. I doubt it would only take an hour with wind and waves added in.

I see a rudder on the front wheel, but no connection to power the thing, I wonder how that works.

 

In the second photo there appears to me to be some sort of a gear box between the seat tube and the seat stays, which probably has a roller which bears against the rear wheel. Then I see what I assume is a transmission cable looping between that gear box and the drive unit under the front wheel.

Sure to be an AC contender in a few years...

 

OK, I see that, so it steers like an outboard motor.

As usual, I'm skeptical, I see problems with Coast Guard rescues, the narrow window of slack tides and no wind that allowed him to do it, tipping over from boat wakes, right of ways etc.

.

 

Here he is again, capitalizing on the BART strike. Watch the video. He touts it as a way to get to work, just an easy thing to do, but it just seems absurd to view it as something you can do whenever you feel like it. Tides, wind, fog, rain, ship and boat traffic, very cold water year around. They had to call off the Cup races because of too much wind. I can picture a steady stream of people drifting out to sea, pedaling like crazy. Although I am glad that such utopian dreams exist and there are places where people can think that way.

http://elcerrito.patch.com/groups/a...y-to-work-check-out-this-water-bike-elcerrito

Not to mention the problems if a pontoon develops a small leak. I guess the guy figures it is such an innocuous undertaking that there is no way a serious thing like drowning could intrude, so who needs a life preserver.


.

 

Imaginary,

He explains his bike as he crosses into Manhattan.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqKx7K34D7g#t=12

wayne

 

looks more like a publicity stunt to me. these devices in various forms have been around for many years, I would be surprised if he is the first to do it in SF bay, likely by someone doing it just for fun, and not seeking news cameras when he did it.

 

He is wearing some sort of fanny pack. That may be one of the new inflatable PFD's. Hard to tell. I also think it's some sort of publicity stunt. The local Coast Guard station which is on Yerba Buena Island in the middle of the Bay Bridge probably had advance notice. Other wise they would have been all over him because this is a waterway with a Vessel traffic system with radar and cameras everywhere. There's no way they couldn't have seen him. And he had to cross a major traffic lane.

 

This one in Australia going under Sydneys harbour bridge http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hy8usNAf33Q

 

They look sort of top heavy. I'd like to see what you do if you tip over in the water, how you get it all back up and running.

 

Liar, liar, pants on fire.
If he doesn't want to bank on why all these public relation crew?
Can someone do something for the fun of doing it?
Oh Crap I forget SF is the house of Oracle: Everything is for sale.
Even his hemorrhoid ointment

 

Will his baycycle take off?

His cycle sure looks like the Italian made Australian cycle ....