a new sport? Wave bikes...

[wave bike]

Hey surfers,

We are three students who love to mountain biking and surfing. We have though about whether you can combine the two sports on the water to make to create a new experience.

What we want is:

1. A combination of the two experiences.

2. Make it easier to catch the big waves. By using your legs to "paddle" to the waves you can get more power and thus better catch the big waves compared to paddle with your arms

3. Make it easier to surf for newbies. You don't need to lie down and paddle with your arms on the board but instead you can sit on a saddle which is installed on the board so you can use your legs (the pedals) to paddle with - just like on a bicycle.

3. We want to make clear that we are not interested in installing an engine on a board. It will destroy the idea of surfing. We still want to you our own power for propulsion to get to the waves.

4. We do not want a general propulsion instead of wave riding, or to boost wave riding with extra energy. We are more looking for a momentum that can get you to the waves. We do think that it is quite difficult at least in the beginning or when the waves are getting really big to paddle to the waves and then get up and stand on the board and surf. It is especially this exercise we want make easier sitting on a saddle and use your feet (on some pedals) to catch the waves and when you are on the waves, you do not need to get up and stand but you can just keep seated and surf.

5. It is also somewhat important to emphasize that this post is meant as an ideas generation. We are interested in your ideas on how this can be constructed and designed not so much whether you think it is a good idea or not.
We some ideas and inputs we can evaluate in our project.

Thanks for the help!

[essex sucks]

Lmao

[SeanGuna]

Ummmmm... how? What? Is this for real? Wow....

Can I get some drawings on what this would look like.. cause I just imagine a paddle board with a long pole sticking out of the middle and a bike seat on it... gigantic wheels that are powered by peddles....

This has to be some weird joke my wife came up with to post here to mock my single track mind....

[tree4]

I hope and pray they are not 'engineering students' tarnishing my profession. Jeesh. If Bethany Hamilton http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bethany_Hamilton can catch waves with one arm why the hell do we need pedals?

[drowningbitbybit]

Do you mean a pedallo?

[wave bike]

Hey,
We reckon that it may sound like a pretty far out idea but we have searched around and seen many inventions such as hydrofoils, surf kayaks etc. That's is not exactly what we are looking for. We want to be able to ride waves! Feel the freedom of surfing! We don't have any ideas of how it would look like and that's why we asked you guys.

1. Bethany Hamilton is amazing! But what we want is not only to make it easier to catch waves. We want something novel! We want a new experience.

2. We don't mean pedallo, we want something more like a surf board.

[Aloha]

The guys who can paddle with their arms deserve to be out there because they can swim if their board goes missing. If you can't paddle, you probably can't swim so you shouldn't be in the surf. Surf kayaks/ surf skis and stand up paddle boards are already a dangerous nuisance. More often than not they are ridden by guys with very little wave experience.

Plus surfing is so beautiful and fluid that by not standing up you aren't getting the same feeling. Kneeboarders and body boarders can't pump, weave and carve as gracefully as a surfboard rider. So lets imagine you built a bike that floats it would be like a trimaran, probably very hard to surf and carve on that.

[Aloha]

Which one will we see out at Pipeline soon?

[phillwilson]

Hi Guys,

I think the big factor you need to think of is safety...

1.if you look at a surfer they tend to wear just equipment for warmth (no boyancy aids hemlets etc)
2. if you look at Surf Kayakers (who are only raised a little bit higher and confined in space a little more, they wear all kinds of extra stuff, i may be wrong but i have always thought this its in part due to the elevated position and trouble of exit ..which does not sit as easily with moving water.

3. i would there for surmise that anything even remotely approaching a non- prone possition would raise the center of balance and make it much harder to catch a wave (which is always going to be a powerful surge of energy from a low impact area ( ie similar to getting pushed from the feet rather then from the shoulders or similar)

barring all this in mind , and the inherent problem with aethetics (look on iwantoneofthose.com for a never ending list of methods of transport that just look ...well dumb) and you may find that theres a self moderating reason why its not been invented yet.

if i was determined to work within the brief you have set out, i would possible keep the prone positon on the board and look at some sort of gear driven self returning stirrups a little similar ot a "stair master" set into non enclosed grooves where you could use use your legs AS WELL as your arms for a little extra launch?

just my 2p

Phill