Archive for December, 2008

Strider

A dual Mirage drive powered, two person launch

Sometime back, I encountered an ex-pat American, now living in Melbourne, Australia, by the name of Mack Horton. Mack wanted to build a two-person boat for cruising the harbor and waterways of his hometown, Melbourne. He was looking to propel his boat with a twin setup of the wonderfully innovative Hobie Mirage drive designed by Greg Ketterman. I really liked that idea as I had already done a few different boats that were Mirage capable, but they were all solo boats. This design concept opened a new door for me, as it would allow me work out the balance and weight issues for a twin drive and once built, I could also discover how much more speed potential might be available beyond a solo drive.

I had a hull in mind from my portfolio that would need to be “massaged” just a bit to get the form stability and low speed performance for which I was looking. The boat had to be able to handle potentially large boat wakes and small chop in the more open regions of the harbor and still be easily driven by human leg power.

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Posted: December 23rd, 2008 under Human Powered Vessel, Mirage Drive.
Comments: 1