On the Water

While Gizmag was at the Green Air Show in Paris, designer Minh-Lôc Truong and high flyer Stéphane Rousson showed us a new pedal-powered personal submarine they've been working on. The streamlined carbon fiber Scubster is currently being built in the south of France by Rousson and a team of University engineers to designs supplied by Truong. The first test run of the 13.78 x 7.87 x 4.92 feet yellow submarine will hopefully take place by the end of June in the Mediterranean waters off the coast of Nice. Read More

Phil Pauley, a London-based concept designer, has unveiled his vision for Sub-Biosphere 2 - a self-sustainable underwater habitat designed for aquanauts, tourism and oceanographic life sciences as well as long-term human, plant and animal habitation. If this sounds like a strangely familiar concept, it’s because Pauley’s system is based on the successes of the US Biosphere 2 project – a man-made closed-ecological system in Arizona that was used by researchers to explore the possibility of sustainable living in a closely-monitored environment. Read More

A couple of years ago, we told you about an eco-friendly resort in the U.S. that was planning on using solar-diesel hybrid houseboats designed by Solarsailor. The boats would feature large, moving photovoltaic “wings” that would not only track the sun to gather energy, but also serve as rigid sails – so the boats could move via solar, diesel or wind power. When docked, the boats’ panels would still gather solar energy, which they would feed into the resort’s power grid. The technology has now been implemented on a passenger ferry, the Suntech-Guosheng, that will take up to 180 sightseers on cruises of the Huangpu River as part of the Shanghai World Expo. Read More

You're looking at the first exclusive images of what we expect to become the Personal Water Craft V 3.0 – it's the Green Samba. It has the same straight line 65 mph performance of the fastest 260 bhp sit-down PWCs, combined with handling and agility far beyond those of a stand-up PWC. The biggest benefit though, is that the Green Samba uses twin direct drive electric propulsion pods (unit pictured bottom left), so it doesn't directly deliver any hydrocarbons, CO2 or NO2 into delicate marine environments. Equally as important as the lack of noxious gases, the Green Samba is also completely silent, removing one of the greatest causes for complaint against PWCs and no doubt offering respite for those creatures with extremely delicate hearing which live on and under the water. A working prototype of the carbon fiber construction Green Samba will be on the water for testing purposes in Q3, 2010. The pictured action shots (bottom center and bottom right) of the Samba are the most recent development of the internal combustion Carbon Samba we first wrote up this time last year. Read More

Now you might be excused for thinking you were in some time-warp with this motorboat which fetched EUR 57,176 (US$77,588 ) at auction recently. Known as the Batboat III, it is powered by a 10.5-liter twin overhead camshaft V8 engine and has caused quite a ripple of excitement among nautical types. Given the above information and the accompanying photograph, have a guess at how old it is. Read More

Ships are big polluters and one of the key reasons for this is the energy lost due to friction as they move through the water. Numerous innovations in marine paint technology have sought to address this issue and now a group of German material research scientists have unlocked a secret that could radically improve fuel consumption... and it's all down to the marvelous properties of one small plant. Read More

Barnacles might seem to be a traditional, almost quaint accoutrement of sea-going vessels, but they’re actually a serious problem. The buildup of marine organisms on a ship’s hull, known as biofouling, can reduce its speed by up to 10 percent. To compensate for the drag, the ship may have to use as much as 40 percent more fuel. Ships have to be lifted into drydock for the removal of barnacles, and sometimes toxic hull coatings are used to prevent them from colonizing. Hopefully, a new innovation may make both of those approaches unnecessary - it’s an autonomous hull-cleaning robot. Read More

After first leaving terra firma in December 2009, Austal's next-gen 102-meter trimaran is now nearing completion. The company says the vessel has impressed during sea trials this year, achieving a speed of 39 knots at 90% MCR (maximum continuous rating) with 340 tonnes deadweight. Read More

If you’re still a little strapped for cash and can’t afford a powerboat and a submarine, then you might want to consider this cross between the two - the Hyper-Sub. On top of the water it boasts speeds of 40 knots with a range of 500 surface miles thanks to twin 440 horsepower inboard Yanmar diesel engines and a 525-gallon fuel tank, while underwater it can dive to depths of 250 feet using an electric over hydraulic self-recharging dive system. Read More