Human Powered Boat

The disadvantage just seems like a fact, though. Its rare that an energy source is ever 100% efficient.

Gyroscope! Sounds nice, and quite helpful, I must say, if well done.

Storage from current sounds nice, and I would think that the minor disadvantages are outweighed by the significant advantages

 

Can't help feeling you lot are spending a lot of time trying to redesign the Wheel! Anybody heard of a little thing called "oars?" been around for a few years and work very well!

Think about it! Mind you with all the extra's some of you want the poor guy to take he'll need a few Olympic oarsmen to move the bloody thing! (apparantly England has a few spare!)

 

sw, poke around somewhat earlier in the thread, rowing has been discussed, along with paddlewheels. Someone who said they were familiar with ocean rowing seemed convinced that it's very inefficient, just getting the blades in the water correctly is said to be a struggle.

 

Rowing...*whip crack*...rowing *crack, scream*. Nah, too many people for the tireme...er, boat. But seriously-I don't know if rowing is a viable alternative. It seems that most trans-ocean single person (Mini-boat) passages are via pedaling (or sailing, but this is human power).

 

I was looking up the USCG for some info and saw the offshore or deep water listing. Containers and their contents are no joke Thousands of Reabok sneakers washed up from a freighter at sea. No one cleans up deep water debris. Avg. # of big freighters lost each year is 5.-------------------------- I'll try to look up what I told you.-- I found the USCG phone # that has live and intelligent people on it. 1-800-368-5647 . Or use E Mail of, uscginfoline@gcrm.com .

 

A lot of $ and...to a lesser amount...people... is/are lost...

 

redesigning the wheel

safewalrus, you really hit the nail on the proverbial head when you liken some of this to redesigning the wheel. One main reason that a rowboat hasn't circumnavigated (certainly not because it isn't achieveable) is that it is really slow going over the long haul. In Mick Bird's attempt in Reach he averaged about 20 nm/day. Increasing this mileage to 30/day would make this achieveable in less than 30 months.Basically, Mick would make 1-1.5 kts for 12-18 hrs./day. Impressive if you ask me. And he's a big Hawaiian while I'm more of a troll shaped haole. I'll need every edge I can get. All the numbers so far seem to add up and it is slowly coming together though.

Sometimes this thread goes off in tangents that don't help much in that they ignore or repeat that which has allready been posted...or perhaps the reply is related to an area of concern ie. colision avoidance, that is currently irrelivant. Much of the topics of these posts are "what to do after it's built", that's not where the project is, nor should we spend much energy there yet.
We need support, constructive criticisms, feed-back of any nature relating to the subject and intelligent well thought out ideas.
That's where this project is.
I'm willing to devote my time, money and more to this boat. This project of a lifetime. I can think of nothing more worth doing with my life than to see this through.
When I started this post, I paraphrased safewalrus regarding redesigning the wheel, as a metaphore for making something simple more complex. The reality, I think though, is that this "machine" has never been built unlike the wheel, it also has quite a few more moving parts. Perhaps I should be looking into drawings of Leonardo da Vinci's as I doubt we are the first to contemplate such a craft. What do you think Leonardo could do with a 5/8" Monel shaft, welded stainless steel tube framing, a few high tech Japaneese bicycle parts, a garage door spring and access to a CNC mill/lathe.We can take technological advances such as lightweight aluminum construction, carbon fiber props, monel shafts, watermakers, photo electric chargers and all other sorts of gadgets from sextants to depth sounders and led running lights. All these have been around for (at least a few) years.
The hard part is bringing it all together...It is certainly not something I could do alone.
SG

 

Woah! He could build a friggin' yacht. Incredible what that kind of creative genius could do.

 

When are you starting bicycling with a small parachute open behind you?

 

*Rocky theme song* Head to Philadelphia, run up the stairs of the museum of art...better yet, run up and down the stairs of the Empire State Building in NYC or one of those really tall buildings in Seattle (the black one-bank of america I think).

 

Which of all us posters lives close to Solomons hometown of Townsend, Washington? Someone needs to get his hoofies shuffling.

 

Assuming you're going to use a bicycle-pedal like interface to the "motor", bicycles are normally operated between 60-130 crank RPMs. For endurance, plan to be at the lower end of that, 70-80.

People do indeed run continuous time bicycle races across the US, see:
http://www.raceacrossamerica.org/

...So I suppose there is a possibility of a boat making it across the Atlantic, although I am guessing the boat will be a lot less efficient than a bike at translating muscle effort to forward progress. You may try to find a rider from the RAAM who would be willing to have a crack at the trip, and may have a realistic chance at making it.

Good luck!
Barry

 

Thinking more on this - from your first post, the rotational motion is much more efficient than the stair stepper motion, by the way - not even close.

Putting two engines inline (2-person craft) would allow one person to power while the other one rests, greatly improving range.

All in all though, the more I think about it, the more skeptical I am, for the following reasons:
- intuitively anyway, I think the efficiency of the boat compared to the bicycle will be a factor of 10 poorer
- at the transduction point, a great deal of energy is lost in slip and in
creating turbulent flow in the boat
- the resistance of the road is far less to the bike than the sea to the boat
- hard tires, narrow tires, and precision bearings minimize frictional losses
on a bike
- a bike may glide 50-100 meters even on level ground - that boat may
glide 5-10 meters in glassy water, but the sea is rarely glassy
- even a recreational rider can do 35mph for short periods, and do 15mph for hours on end; a trained
athlete can do 30mph for hours on end
- it may be worse than a factor of 10 in average sea conditions

- those design features that would make the craft more efficient in power translation (your biggest problem) would also make it more difficult and unsafe to endure the voyage in.

I wish you all the best, but it sounds like an exceedingly difficult design task, and for the operator facing a trip across the ocean, a very risky proposition to say the least - the designer should be the one to make the voyage.

 

Another idea - one way to get some relatively easy/quick real world experimental feedback on a prototype would be to buy a used tandem sea kayak hull with an open cockpit (will need room for pumping knees). Put in your seat and a quick design cut at the drivetrain from off the shelf components, and give it some workouts in calm waters to see what it's like.

I work in R&D, and a basic principle in practical projects is that the greater the risk of failure, the more important it is to get quickly constructed protoypes into "the lab" early. Prototypes allow you to assess feasibility - perhaps it can't be done, and even if feasible, allow early recognition of and corrections on, inappropriate design features. On a high risk project, you do not want to spend too long on the drawing board - that can just be a lot of wasted time/money, because you can't assess your state very accurately on the drawing board. Unless you're certain that the first cut you take will also be the last, figure out a way to experiment cheaply and rapidly.

 

Hi Solomon,

Since your goal is to do a trans-pacific, human powered voyage, why not think a bit outside the box. Do you realize how much easier and safer and faster your human powered vessel could go if it were 20 feet underwater, dragging a flexible air ventilator tube. Think about it, no waves to go over or tip you over. You would travel in more of a straight line rather than up and over waves, which must more than double the actual distance travelled. Much less drag in a submersible. In many cases you would have additional visibity of approaching craft as well as being able to hear the sound of their motors better when underwater. You would be below most flotsom, reducing your chance of collision. Lots of work on human powered submersibles has already been done. You could probably even use a some kind of sine wave propulsion which would be virtually impossible to foul or break. BoatDesign.net's long time fin propulsion guy, Kjell could steer you in a good direction. When the water is flat, you could still travel on the surface and charge up your batteries with photovoltaics (solar electric panels). In advantageous currents you could travel while resting.