His name is “Free Wheeling” anย ingenious mechanical outboard just requires good old fashioned muscle power and not a lot of it, as it has a unique 3 :1 gear ratio drive. Green credentials with no maintenance, lightweight and compact design.
The ingenious mechanical outboard Free Wheeling just requires good old-fashioned muscle power and not a lot of it, as it has a unique 3 :1 gear ratio drive. Green credentials with no maintanance, lightweight and compact design.
The team filmed it on our very first trial in winds in excess of 15 knots – not ideal. Is it brilliant for steerage? – That depends on your use/expectations. For most uses such as trolling, fun use, and in fact distances it works well – what it is not is a slalom level steerage system.
You can steer with it and we have kids that are very good at it – however for the most of us the best way to use it is for the unit to be in a fixed position and turned to get up the pace and to then either stop paddling and turn, allowing the boat to get into the direction you want and then put straight and away you go.
However, the most popular user and method (couples who a. don’t like lifting the engine back and forth and b. where trying to row their inflatable is very difficult) is for one person to wind the Free Wheeling in the fixed position and the other to steer with the oars. When doing this the whole system is simply brilliant.
I bought one, nice idea but it has some real shortcomings. the two major issues are the lock nut to prevent the tiller from moving. Is badly thought out as it does not do the job of locking the direction of the prop thus the dingy underway zig zags with the turn of the prop, What is required is a 90o handle to steady the dingy direction. this is how I over came to the problem. also, the prop needs to be about 6′ deeper in the water.