Commuting in the liquid lane
Pretty cool article in the Seattle Times about a mixed-mode bike/waterbike commute. There are people who take shortcuts across lakes here too, but generally only in the wintertime, and they don’t have to change vehicles.
The video on the story is also good. I like the idea of a camping version, wonder how that would go over in the BWCA. Of course, the latent racer in me wants to have sprint races on one of the local lakes with these. And maybe build one purely for speed. 5mph? I gotta think we could double that. Lower design, sleeker pontoons, lighter, of course. Hmmm…
For speedy designs, check out this,
which exceeded 20 mph.
That one’s pushed by an air propeller, but I recall reading about another design back in the late 80s or early 90s which used an underwater propeller on a little T-shaped foil, and otherwise looked exactly like the bike in the article.