"A blur on the radar of the British Coast Guard"

I want one. Buzz up to Quadra island and zip back and forth in front of Suzuki.

Now imagine that that thing full of explosives in in the Persian gulf off the coast of Iran.......

...wonder if it can beat a 454 inboard though

;-)

tomax7....the weight of the 454 alone would mean it would be wondering what the hell went by it....at half throttle...:)

ONLY 300kgs??? They better get rid of a couple of those Mercs to carry a more productive load!!!

Stephen : Then imagine it after a 5 second burst from a Block 1B CIWS :)

"...wonder if it can beat a 454 inboard though"

Unless the 454 is blown and running on nitro its hard to get 2000 hp. Also, an inboard has one prop in the water, that baby has 8. I doubt very much of the boat is in the water at any time. The hull probably rides on the Ground (water) effect.

yeaaahhh baby! It's time to go fishun!

They only run 4 motors at a time. The rest are spares, lol.

A strange configuration. It would be interesting to know more. By appearances once it got to ? speed the outer two on each side would come out of the water and then just be dead weight. However I would immagine it would get to that speed rapidly.

Jim....one hopes

But the concern is that if it is a blur on the radar that it beceomes hard to hit or somehting that can move in before reaction......small, fast suicide boats are a definite concern for any Navy, especially when pulling into or our of port.

I hope the ROE covers this stuff....

Stephen, there is a reason the navies using the CIWS, upgraded to the Block 1B. Anything from stationary targets to mulitple mach missiles can be targeted and tracked now.

Jim,

I'll go hunting for it on line....thanks

Made for 'tuggin' not speed :)

Bet it works well --- 8 props, 2000 hp, manuverability push pull twist, redundancy, sixty skiers !!

I thought this was a whale watchers boat!

A conventional-shape boat will only travel so fast on water no matter how many engines you slam onto it. This is like strapping F-18 engines on a Cesna, and pretending you can break the speed of sound. Aint gonna happen. I suspect that the explanation included with this photo is fictional.

Here you go :

http://www.murdoconline.net/archives/003558.html

Gee alex, you should click on the picture to read about it. With power and hull shape like that, this puppy planes on top of the water.

BTW, I think Kate was actually looking at the Saskatchewan cruise ship at the website when this caught her eye.

Pacific Yachting magazine/strange boats

Good grief! Why risk trying to land a chopper on that speedboat if the operator(s) refuse to stop? Just blow the frikk'n thing out of the water. End of story.

CIWS - great weapons system. The trick is telling suicide boats apart from all the other marine traffic.

Alex.....I would expect a Cessna with an F-18 engine on its butt would go far faster then any of the gubermint welfare sponsored crap Bomb(as in crash)bardier ever produced!!!. Look at that sucker. As texas canuck says,it floats on the water(ground)effect. Or have you never seen a fast boat?
Hey....texas...good catch on the prarie schooner...LOL

Cessna with f-18 engines would break the speed of sound. After the wings ripped off. Of course it would be a short flight, best made vertically first.

As for speed, in the 60's old hydroplanes had 1250 hp Allison V-12 aero engines in them and they did 180mph on the Okanagan lake. Single prop, 1/4 of the blade bit the water and the sponsons made occasional contact with the water. Only other contact was the rudder, and that too was occasional.

In short, the 8 engine monster, if it was designed as a ram tunnel hull, it probably can do 160 plus on a calm day.

In the early 70's I was a driver of competition water-skiing boats. In the late 70's and early 80's I owned and sailed a twenty-foot Tornado class catamaran that I had purchased, used, from the Canadian Olympic team. I'm a little suspicious of the story attached to the photo, but that's not why I'm commenting, I just want to offer you a couple really neat videos related to some topics in physics that have been alluded to by commenters above. Ground effect would not be involved here, you're thinking of planing, which overcomes the proportionality to square-root of length limit that is experienced by draft ships. Anyway...

Brossard Trimaran - Hydrofoil Sailboat - Two Skiers

www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6JiYwQJ4ho

Russian Ekranoplan - Caspian Sea Monster - Ground Effect Device

www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6HQSNERadQ

PS: Why yes, I do own a copy of the Oxford Dictionary of Ships and the Sea, the Ashley Book of Knots, and an early 50's US Navy hydrofoil engineering handbook that I purchased when I was considering the concept of putting hydrofoils on my Tornado. Why do you ask ?-)

Hi Vitruvius,

While hydroplanes may not be partially flying in ground effect, what force is keeping them from making infrequent contact with the water?

I too have owned several boats. 48' cruiser that definitely planed at 24 knots. 454 olds jet boat, that also planed. Is a hydroplane at 180 planing? Or is there some other term?

Hydrofoils definitely plane on the blade, even though they look like they are flying. I also raced cars, and the shape of the underside was a reverse airfoil. Performed the opposite function of a normal airfoil as it was upside down and created downforce. Prior to ground effects on race cars, we often had some poor bugger lifted right off the ground and flipped over backwards on the deer leap bumps backstraight. Makes me think that at 180mph the wind ripping underneath a hull creates lift. Or ground effect.

Please help me out here. I hate saying stupid things.

Agreed, Geothermal, hydroplanes and hydrofoils are not the same thing. A hydrofoil relies on the lifting thrust created by the foil shape intersecting the fluid body, while a hydroplane relies on the lifting effect of the hull rising on top of the fluid body.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planing_(sailing)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrofoil
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroplane
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroplaning_(road_vehicle)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_effect_in_aircraft
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_effect_in_cars

You might also like to check out Her Majesty's Canadian Ship Bras d'Or, a Canadian naval hydrofoil built in 1960-1967 to test the feasibility of an ocean-going hydrofoil for use in anti-submarine warfare:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMCS_Bras_d'Or_(FHE_400)

While I'm here, a Roadrunner Cartoon. You must admit, the comedic timing is brilliant:

video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=7929437438658673331

The trouble with posting on SDA is that there is a wealth of knowledge in virtually every field. How fast the boat in question is capable of going I don't know but from personal experience, I recall putting an outboard motor that was at plate limits on a Zodiac. I opened that puppy up and I swear only the prop was in the water most of the time! Scared myself silly. I imagine that the drug runners could get up a pretty good head of steam provided there is no wave action out there.

Anyhow, I recall a while back on SDA there was a whale watching boat picture that had 4 outboards.

Bras d'Or, another political Arrow. Cutting edge technology just scrapped. It's the Canadian way.

The hydroplane race boats one generally sees on lakes are the "pickle fork" style semi-tri hull things where most of the boat is held out of the water by ram air effect between the two front hulls. About the only thing in the water is the bottom half of the prop. I see from Google guys are getting ~30 mph out of a 15 horse motor. That's pretty cool. ~:D Unlimited class use helicopter jet engines.

This drug boat thing, I don't think I'd want to ride in it. Looks like a zodiac with a bunch of motors on it. Twitchy is hell I bet. A little too much loud pedal and over you go. Could be painful at speed.

"Twitchy is hell I bet. A little too much loud pedal and over you go. Could be painful at speed."

Perhaps the driver gets to plant his face in a kilo of cocaine like Al Pacino in Scareface, before hitting the loud pedal.

Followed the links and yes, that Sask cruise ship is a winner!Is that what kate uses on the w/e?

What is it you call this again, the Intarw3b? I just found some footage of the Swedish Olympic Tornado team at YouTube - www.youtube.com/watch?v=NldeTAH2160

Of course, these Olympic Tornado sailors are wimps: two of them, 400 pounds, racing against the clock in good weather. Not me, my preference was always sailing by myself, 150 pounds, pitted against a thunderstorm, not the clock. People said I was crazy. But they don't understand that it's about survival, not speed.

Here are pictures my Tornado, the Seagoon, and me from 1978, at the Brittania Yacht Club in Ottawa, where I was one of the four summer students from Alberta who were members while attending Bell-Northern research. Oh, and yes, two friends and I did wear Stetsons during the Commodore's sail-past. They thought we were nuts. Now they know better.

sagaciousiconoclast.blogspot.com/2007/06/seagoon.html

...obviously Photoshopped, that's not you Vitruvius, you look too young...

;-)

I remember laying horizontal over the water while on my buddies sail boat in Vancouver's English Bay (it was quite windy), then trying to cut/outrun a freighter coming through the Gate as we bee-lined it to North Shore.

Crazy days, man that freighter was big!

Send it after all those drug smuglers and arm it with a deck gun

That boat was built in the U.K by Crompon Marine. The owner had been recently charged with aiding & abetting thw local drug trade.

Here is a link to another website disussing this boat;

http://www.rib.net/forum/showthread.php?t=17672&highlight=crompton

That boat was built in the U.K by Crompon Marine. The owner had been recently charged with aiding & abetting thw local drug trade.

Here is a link to another website disussing this boat;

http://www.rib.net/forum/showthread.php?t=17672&highlight=crompton

Is this doc fruitfly's bass boat?

lee, run 4 shut down 4 would create drag, reduce speed

test

WL: "test"

...did I pass?

"At full power it used 900 litres of petrol an hour."

For us old folks, thats over 230 gallons a hour! Or the equivalent to 6 x 40 gallon barrels. With a fuel load like that I would think your cruising range would be fairly restricted.

6x40 drums's?

...with that weight and the uh, supplies, I'm surprized it moves let alone float.