‘The Jolly Julep,’ Handmade and Hand-Powered Paddle Boat #WMF16
The Fulton Mules, on display at World Maker Faire this past weekend. It uses a simple slide mechanism to translate human push-power into spinning paddle speed (see video below!). And as things go in NYC you can’t exactly park this in your apartment (some apartments are smaller than this boat!), so the whole thing was designed to quickly break down and re-assemble; the team built it the day before in a few hours (in the rain no less!). The boat was a recent participant at the Battle for Mau Mau Island, itself a project of some of the Swimming Cities crew, who I wrangled many years ago to display their fish-boat at the inaugural 2010 World Maker Faire – so it was good to see boat culture alive and well at a Maker Faire!
The wooden fin-waves on the side were a nice touch!
Watch it in action – play the video below! (Now of course air is a lot less resistant than water, but this shows you how fast this thing can go with human-powered effort!)
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