A combination of living on the water, an innate desire to build stuff, and loving to race bicycles evolved into thinking about a bicycle propelled boat. I know people's images are the paddle boat, or maybe those oversized tricycles you've seen around. Nope I wanted something that truely could be raced. You would add your current bike to a system so the sizing and comfort would not be an issue. I can image putting your fixed gear bike on a set of pontoons. Perhaps even having the fork do the steering. Something like the rollers on a trainer would be an integral part of the propulsion system. We could crits around a set of buoys, Time trials, and pretty much everything but a hilly road coarse could be done. A time trial on a water bike is really just an effective way of combining the first two events of a triathlon. No helmets either!
I googled water bicycles and came across a site with term I had not seen...Aquatic Velocipedes. Must be a word, as it just passed the spell checker. I saw some patent drawings of the original tug boats I had seen before, but the last one was exactly what I was thinking of, gosh I was only 100 years late, but an inventor right here from upstate New York built the following
So now I am calling for design help. How to make the pontoons? How long? I like the screw motor in the heading picture, which is better? What sort of pontoons make the best cornering? Is there anyway to encorporate carbon fiber, and Ti into the design... strike that, lets keep it simple. Maybe some forms to create fiberglass pontoons. Much like sailboat racing we can publish a standard size boat? All sorts questions are coming to mind.
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