designing a fast rowboat

I think you are right, Ancient kayaker!
I will start a new thread: "A new conception of hull", what do you think?
But what I posted here was a dogma break. Thinking of rowboats, even using foil is reinventing the wheel! And in my opinion this kind of boat is in state of art, there has nothing else to do.
I think it is time to move to another way. But if it not the same philosophy of the thread I will stop to post here.

 

That reminded me of something. Some time back (about ten years IIRC) Graeme King built an eight that had a narrower hull than usual. To stabilise it he used three foils/fins. These were fully submerged and attached to the main hull. There were two forward, splayed like pectoral fins on a shark, and one aft. The aft one was either just in front of or just behind the rudder I think.

My memory is a bit hazy but I think the fins were each about eight inches span and three inches chord. Wooden Boat magazine did an article on it and of course you could always ask King himself.

King Boat Works

Address: PO Box 234, Putney, VT United States, 05346

Telephone: (802) 387-5373

Google map here: http://www.bhfinder.com/Boathouse-Finder/View/King-Boat-Works

 

Fast rowboat

I recommend building the hull out of aluminium.

 

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WoodenBoats online index showed about a dozen results for a Graeme and King search. I found an excellent builder/designer article from 1991. I found other likely articles but most of the unfound were the building the Kingfisher series and working with veneers. The titles do not look promising but maybe the foiled eight was thrown in as a sidenote. I will run these articles down at the library. Thank you.


Jim.

 

Call Graeme King's shop.

 

I think this thread has been hijacked.

 

Ok, rowboats. I started running quite a few options with Godzilla, and what it's telling me is that even a fixed seat single should be about 6.5 metres long and 0.55 metres wide on the waterline. This is assuming the speed will be between 5.5 and 6.5 knots, which seems reasonable for a fixed seat boat.

If you use less beam it will cut the resistance, but the boat wont have any initial metacentric height left, which is something I wouldn't be keen on for a recreational boat.

 

Remember that in Godzilla you can impose a constraint on GMT. This is probably better than just constraining the beam or L/B. (In the latest versions users can also constrain GML which isn't all that useful for most applications.)

Leo.

 

That's what I did.

 

Designing a fast row boat

Originally Posted by NoEyeDeer
By the way, have you ever actually tow tested the full size boats to see how well the drag in real life matches the predicted drag from Michlet?

A couple of years ago I built two planing hull models each about 3' long. I used the Savitsky "long form" to predict the performance from rest to a model speed of 20 knots. The speed was measured with a GPS. The towing resistance was measured by a digital scale connected via a fishing line running over a pulley at the end of a pole. For both hulls the measured values fell on top of the predicted values.

The models were running along side the tow boat with the pole long enough to place the models in undisturbed water.

This experience was a confidence booster.

 

I've moved/merged the relevant posts from this thread into http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/boat-design/design-possibilities-modular-vehicle-35531.html to keep things together and to keep this thread from being drawn off course.

 

I might I missed this thread "Hydrofoil Assisted or Full Flying Kayak". Rick convinced me. I do not think I'll try foil assist on my rowing craft; it would likely be slower.

Jim

 

Nordvindcrew's post #810 triggered a nice discussion on rowing speed variation over the following few pages, in case you missed it, that also included a mention of a foiling rowboat.

 

Outriggers?
If you make the hull very narrow to reduce wetted surface, would it be an advantage to have a small stabilizing device under each oarlock, effectively a trimaran?

 

http://frontrower.com/blog/