Same size box, but this is not a bike...

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yoothgeye

yoothgeye

I build stuff.
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So I bought a water skipper, also known as a Water Bird, or maybe an Aqua Skipper. Anyway, it's a human powered hydrofoil. I'd seen videos of them online for years and always wanted one but it wasn't will recently that I realized the price was less than half what they use to be.

It comes in a box the same size as a bicycle comes in, but then it assembles to this:
skipper.jpg


Here is a video of one in action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58Rd_FjgyfE

Looks easy right? Yeah... I can see how it can get easy, but it wasn't any of those people's first try, I think most people who get one look more like this guy: (2 minutes of mostly failed attempts) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_5eMMkIOeo

I put it together at church with my youth group then took them to the boat landing to try it out, the power company has a lot of water out today and the water is about 5 foot below the pier, so pier launching (preferred method) was out. I made about 30 beach launch attempts, the majority failures, but 2 times I was actually going pretty good. Can't wait to try again off a pier.

I'm very tired, had to wash the sand out of my crack. Maybe I should paint it flat black with red accents... :mrgreen:

Anyone ever try one or see one in action?
 
aka_locojoe said:
Man that looks like a lot of work. Good luck to you.
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One of my students compiled some of my fails on a video on facebook tonight. It was fun though. None of them were prepared with their bathing suits tonight to try it too, so once we have lots of people trying it, it should get a lot more fun.
 
=O Awe man I've never seen one of thos before I want to try it !! That's awesome !
 
BAck from our mission trip, hope to get this in the water again soon. So far all my fat butt has been doing is sinking it, but I've gone about 30 feet on it with a beach start.
 
Jpromo said:
Hm.. now if only one could stand-fish off of it.. or, better yet, troll.
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I can see trolling, but that's about it, of course, I wouldn't wanna fall off the back into the hooks.
 
Uncle Stretch said:
The guy in the first video made it look so easy. Whoever sold it to you is probably still laughing. :wink:
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Maybe so, but there are plenty of videos of everyday people riding this thing, I just need to get it in the water off of a pier of bulk head.
 

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