Design Goals for a Paddleboat

A Paddleboat is designed to do three things:

1. Provide a level ride in moderately rough water
2. Push directly against the water to provide drive
3. Reduce the amount of water drag in the water

How it works

Because your breath is captured by a paddle vein that redirects the force, there is ideally no tendency at all to push the nose of the boat down as with other regatta boats.

The word "ideally" is used because the paddleboat housing is built to concentrate breath force on the paddle vein. This means covering most of the paddle so your breath is trapped. The only way for it to escape is by pushing the paddle vein. But in this process, a little nose tipping force is unavoidably generated.

As the paddle spins, the veins are being pushed forward by air at the top and push the water backwards at the back. The longer the veins at the top, the more your breath can be leveraged. But if the veins are long at the bottom, the harder it is to push the water! Generally, this trade off is solved by making the veins shorter or by raising the paddle axle over the deck if you blow softly or by the draft limit set by the regatta regulations.

Draft is how far the bottom of your boat is below the water line. Generally, the limit is one and a half inches. There are a couple of reasons to lift the hub of the paddle above the water, so the largest paddles likely to useful will be about three inches in diameter.

Raising the paddle wheel hub keeps water from reflected waves from spinning the paddle wheel backwards. It also may trap some air and lift the paddle assembly a bit. This lifting tends to make the rear of the boat unstable. A vent is placed in the base of the paddle housing to let reflected wave water and trapped air escape.

If designed well, the paddle housing lets your breath in against one vein, pushes it back and then exposes the airflow to another vein. In doing so, water sticks to the sides of the paddle wheel and its housing, causing a viscous drag. This can be reduced by rubbing the inside of the paddle housing with a little softened paraffin wax or vaseline.

Steering is accomplished by blowing to the corners of the paddle housing.