THE latest hare-brained scheme is using our canals to produce waves for surfers to travel along at speed!
Harry Valentine writing in Maritime Executive believes that a bow wave can be generated on a straight canal to produce enough of a 'travelling wave' to support surfing, Alan Tilbury tells us.
Bow wave for several miles
Harry Valentine explained 'when a boat 'sailed' along a narrow section of a canal at sufficient speed to produce a bow wave and then dropped its sailing speed, the bow wave would often continue to propagate along the canal over a distance several miles, or a comparatively greater distance than ocean coastal waves'.
He went into details of a scale model using a ramp with the boat with a water weighted hull slightly narrower and perpendicular to the canal then allowed to rapidly descend and strike the water, broadside, to produce a wave on the water, travelling along the canal that surfers could ride.
Carry passengers
Harry Valentine proposes to use the later built straight canals, remarking the absence of commercial traffic along with minimal recreational boat traffic also provides opportunity to experiment with wave-powered propulsion, that could ‘capture' the wave energy to propel a boat carrying several passengers over an extended distance along the canal.
[it is obviously clear that Harry Valentine has no knowledge whatsoever of the construction of canal banks, that his scheme would destroy in weeks, or the number of boats now using the canals or more importantly the many moored boats along the banks of the canals, that would most likely be capsized!—Editor.]