Autogiro Boats - History 1970-1980

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For the next 10 years, nothing much happened except that Kenneth May provided a couple of demonstration models for the Boat Show stand in 1971. He realised that a high-hub wind turbine would have severe gyroscopic moments, so that a serious-sized one would need to be on a multihull for stability. However, by 1979, he still had not actually tested the 1971 model.


Whirlwind - Hannan - 1977/80


AYRS 94 (1980) p.32
AYRS 87 (1977) p.47
The American cartoonist Douglas Hannan has provided AYRS with a number of drawings of rather unusual-looking boats over the years. These two date from 1977 & 1980. I think that he did occasionally make models of some of his ideas.

Sanderson - 1979


AYRS 91 (1979) p.5
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Anyway, Simon Sanderson made a model of one of these in 1979. He also tried a vertical axis rotor with blades which flipped around, but then he also went to work on a different type of boat and gave up on wind turbines.

Webb - 1979

Also in 1979, George Webb built a full-scale catamaran with a wind turbine which worked both by driving a water propeller and as an autogiro. There are photos of it in AYRS 91, but they do not scan very well, so I did not include them here. The BBC also filmed this boat, but somehow the idea did not really catch on even then.

With the high price of oil in the early 1980s, there was quite a lot of wind-driven ship research from about 1980-85. Wind turbine boats became almost respectable at last !

Te Waka - Bates - 1980

Around this time there was a wind turbine boat called Te Waka built in New Zealand by Jim Bates. (This is yet another boat whose photo won't scan very well). It was a fairly small 3 bladed turbine on a boat which could probably have taken a larger one. Apparently it travelled at roughly the same speed in all wind directions, and in particular it did 7 kn directly into a 14 kn wind. Then they got into trouble with their government funders because they were suspected of having received commercial sponsorship as well, so that was that.

Weld/Gougeon/Hawkins - 1983

The late Philip Weld, who had won the Singlehanded Transatlantic race at the age of 65 in 1980, intended to have another go in 1984 in a boat with a high-tech wingmast, which he described as "the ultimate geriatric rig". He was very keen on wind and solar energy, and the Gougeon brothers, (who had built his winning boat Moxie), were by then very prominent makers of wood-epoxy wind turbine blades. Unfortunately Philip Weld did not live long enough to see this one through. His last boat was unfinished at his death, and was then taken over by Havilah Hawkins. I could not find a picture of that one, but there is one of Havilah Hawkins's earlier wind turbine boats in National Geographic in 1985. (This was obviously not a racing model). The Philip Weld boat was a 32' catamaran designed by Jim Brown, and in 1985 it had a wind turbine driving a propeller. Havilah Hawkins is another eccentric, who powers his home using a hydro electric generator running off an old millpond, and who thinks that patents are unethical.

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