V8 Dolphin goes on and under the water

“Dan's next version will stay with the dolphin profile but with the modified shallow V transom I designed for my new Bionic Dolphin two seater. He's running a rotary engine with a V-drive.

“The new wings are stepped and use tipsails and the hull is also stepped for better surface speeds, while we don’t expect either modification will detract from the sub-surface performance.”

Doc’s next prototype is likely to be the wildest of them all so far, a two seat, radical trainer and demonstration model with an aluminium 400hp Corvette LS2 engine and race bred Mercruiser outdrive.

“This new 17 foot tandem-control techno-toy is guaranteed to be the wildest ride in the sea,” says Doc.

“Running an outdrive will be a new twist incorporated into my two seater. It will offer a new level of agility with it's vectored thrust and it will also simplify the production process by using more off-the-shelf components, rather than the one-off custom manufactured parts.”

“The new Bionic Dolphin project will be hitting the waves in 2005,” says Doc. “We expect to begin the sea trials by mid summer 2005 and begin full retail production in early 2006.”

“I plan to personally build only two more but I will put together the tooling for the production line, and will continue to design our new models” he said.

“After fielding literally hundreds of requests for Bionic Dolphins, I decided I needed to bring this technology to the working guy who is bored with the limitations of the jet-ski, but doesn’t have the time or skills to build one for themselves” says Doc.

...continued