As far as the comparison with Ken Warby’s boat goes, if you’ve ever seen the doco on Warby’s run you’d see it was set on an inland dam in dead calm conditions. At one stage when they were wanting to go for a run, a single powerboat went out and they had to stop the whole shebang and wait. If I remember rightly, they didn’t just have to wait until the powerboat waves had passed once, they had to wait until they had gone back and forth across the lake and faded from inches to nothing.


If you look at most of the pics, they show a boat about 30ft long and glassy calm water. So it’s fair to say that this probably doesn’t scale up. Warby’s boat could ride on the very back ends of the sponsons (and whatever it had on the tail) with the rest of the boat out of the water, not touching any chop. A normal three-pointer hydro runs on the very tail of the sponsons and the semi-surfacing prop at the stern, with the rest not touching any chop.

Windsurfers sail on choppy water. They are much smaller so there is less space between the planing surface on the bottom of the sponsons and the “tunnel” between them. If the tunnel cannot create ground effect lift and instead touches the water, it’s a long and skinny surface and therefore not an efficient planing surface. So comparing a board to a boat like Warby’s is fraught with danger.

Chris 249 said..
Windsurfers sail on choppy water.

Not if I can help it, my preference is for glassy smooth. By the time the warby leaves my workshop, with any luck" Fangy's or Lilacs will be doing there thing, and there'll be some super smooth water to try it on.