Spider-Like Catamaran Travels 5,000 Miles On One Tank

Lucas123 writes "Proteus, a Wave Adaptive Modular Vessel that looks like a spider, is so fuel efficient that it can travel 5,000 miles on one load of diesel fuel. The 100-foot-long, 50-foot-wide boat rides on metal and fabric pontoons that have hinges and shock absorbers to flex with the motion of the waves, which helps it to skim over the water at a max speed of 30 knots. It made its debut yesterday in New York harbor."

Comments

Much better is possible

[cayle clark]

Provided you are content to drive a displacement hull (a normal, rounded-vee shape) at no more than its "hull speed" you can go VERY long distances on VERY little horsepower and hence fuel. I am basing this on The Troller Yacht Book by marine designer George Buehler, in which for example, he claims that his 48-foot "Diesel Duck" can go 11,410 miles (Tahiti, anyone?) on a fuel load of 900 gallons i.e. over 12 m.p.g., which makes the snazzy catamaran look pretty bad.

The hitch is, you cover that distance at a speed of 6.77 knots, and it takes you a couple of months. Suddenly the catamaran looks a little better...

video

[giorgosts]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070907/ap_on_sc/stran ge_watercraft;_ylt=AnZQeGeJ4mIRmad2pvwAPYas0NUE (or you can save with mplayer $ mplayer -playlist "http://playlist.yahoo.com/makeplaylist.dll?sid=43 071431&t=wmv&br=400&s=2022436514&start=0&end=&afr= 2&nid=3996206&mid=3996204&d=40&pg=NDgwMzM0NDIzNDZl MWQ1Yz&q=6939189985647e4101ee1c&authid=&sl=40&so=/ free/local/wcbs/103151&sdm=&pt=&tcode=&audio=0" -dumpstream -dumpfile proteus.wmv