I always thought about getting an old sailing cat, mounting a pushbike
frame on it, and feeding the drive through a secondhand outboard leg
mounted to the rear crossmember. Mind you, the paddle wheel thing would
be dead easy for a cat.
It would be cheap to do, and you would have a fast, roomy boat. Add
bike frames as you gain passengers!

Andrew.

Bob:

We have a number of pedal-powered boats in the "Fun Boats" section of
the web site.

http://www.dngoodchild.com

Cheers,

DNG

Bob La Londe wrote:

I have wondered about the efficiency of peddle power.

Glen-L has a nice design for a peddle powered boat, and there are numerous
peddle powere ABS plastic boats available for sale at moderate prices both
on-line and in the local big box stores.

They all have one thing in common. They use a paddle wheel for propulsion.
I can see the obvious simplicity in design. A chain from the pedals to the
drive axle and its ready to go. In almost all other craft though a
propeller desing seems to be more efficient.

From big ships to small pleasure craft the propellor seems to be the rule.
For a small peddle powered craft would a prop design make the best use of
the available power as well? How in the world woudl you go abotu figuring
out the optimum size and pitch prop for an application like that?