A wave powered boat

Captains Cat":17bs7yhl said:
THIS IS NOT AN ENDORSMENT EITHER FOR OR AGAINST THE GREEN MOVEMENT
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I worry that if this concept proliferates, the ocean's inherent wave power will diminish accordingly and what affect will that have on the atmosphere? Or maybe on the ocean's natural circulation? Or the birth rate of Blondes? We don't know the subtleties of the oceans, ya know. Tsk *

* For the terminally literal reader, the previous statement was made with tongue firmly implanted in cheek.

Don
 
Tom, think of how a dolphin or whale moves when they flip their tails up and down. Or how you move in the water by kicking up and down with your swim fins...

This explanation is in the link in the middle of the page that my link takes you to.

"Wave powered boats feature fins at the front of the craft, which generate thrust force by moving up and down like the tails of dolphins and whales and absorbing the energy of the waves."

I guess the only difference between one of these and a whale is that you don't have to stay 100 yards or miles away from it legally! :roll:

It's also got solar power for the electrical stuff, just uses the waves for propulsion.

Charlie
 
ok I'm not getting it. the wave hits the fin and the fin goes up and then what?? it turns a pump or a prop or what. a whale is not moving from the energy of the water hitting him. Hes moving from pushing with his muscules against the water. so I am just not getting how this works. are the fins spring loaded and push back after the wave moves the fin up?? I need drawings and crayons.
 
Here is a link which shows how it works:

http://www.inhabitat.com/2008/02/26/tra ... ered-boat/

Horie is a very accomplished boating innovator--and has taken some "unusual" boats across the Pacific. I suspect he will make it...assuming good weather routing. I think that if one was bucking into a heavy storm an seas, that there would be both danger to the vessel, and the possiblity of not making headway....

I agree with those who say that sailing is easier, probably costs less and is faster.
 
Well, today I filled up the Ford Hybrid at the Safeway, $3.25 a gallon with a 10 cent discount. I noticed a sign on the pump stating that all Safeway gas stations are wind powered, in that Safeway somehow purchases thewindpower. On a day when the Dow lost over 300 points and oil topped $103, I do feel the time for wisecracks is fast ending. More people may be going from 90 to 75 hp on 22's and 50 to 40 on 16's. It all adds up.
 
I'm with Tom on this one, I don't get it...the wave hits the fins and...what? The videos on the other site all had the rider pumping away, again with some kind of muscle power, to move whatever was below the water line. It would seem like waves hitting a fin would not, you know, do anything...but of course they must.
 
Ok that away. its like I said a spring is the driving force. the waves compress the spring which stores the energy then releases the energy by pushing back. That's what I was thinking it was, but no were in the articale did it say that. Which is no suprise, most news I read these day's are just fluff and little info. Good luck to the sailer and maybe this will lead to something but a nuke reactor is better and we already know how to do that. Seem a lot of effort being spent to power ships, home, buisness etc when we already have a cheap clean means to do so.
 
OK, I'm confused. Waves do have a lot of energy, look what happens when they hit shore, especially a breakwater. And the motion of any single particle in a wave is circular, in the vertical plane. I got that. Also a spring, when it's compressed stores energy, and when it relaxes releases that energy. I also know that if you can develop differential motion, a spring between the horizontal fin and the hull can be compressed.

What's confusing me, is how in the middle of the ocean, where the period of waves can be fairly long, how does that fin get compressed? As the hull goes up so would the fin. In my experience the hull rides the wave, unless the slope is abrupt (big seas.) Also, in a calm, I guess you'd just sit there. To propel a boat of that size, you'd need some BIG springs,and they wouldn't compress easily. Just help lift the hull, I would think.

As to a dolphin, that tail doesn't absorb energy from a wave, it imparts energy, just as an oar does.Thus they can swim underwater, where there are no waves.

Anyway, if that guy can get enough energy out of open ocean waves to propel a boat across the ocean, I'm impressed. Power generation techniques have been proposed by anchoring cables to the bottom of the ocean, and letting wave driven floats provide the force and motion to generate electrical power; but that boat is free floating.

Boris
 
no but I'll bet if you replaced one of your 40 hp Honda powerheads with an electric motor and swapped out the other 40 hp honda power head with a generator that was powered by the prop...you could run forever..assuming you run twin honda 40's...you may be out of luck with the single
 
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