At what point during the construction of this contraption did 26-year-old John Hofstetter bypass the question, “Is this a good idea?” Just look at the creation for a second: a tiny boat with extended pontoons and a bar mounted aft, with a rotor blade system attached to the top, just above the head of the rider. You will notice that there is no engine or any other method of driving the rotordisc except via wind power, and there don’t seem to be a lot of controls for the boat in this 1961 British Pathé film on what is referred to as a “giro boat”. The premise looks simple enough: hook giro boat to a fast motor boat, get pulled along, let the wind turn the rotor and at some point, liftoff occurs and the rider in the tiny little boat becomes something like a parasailer, flying an unholy hybrid of boat and helicopter feet off of the surface of a lake somewhere in Scotland.
Can you imagine safety types seeing this coming out as a new product today? Or, even more fun, can you imagine what happens when that line disconnects and the guy in the boat suddenly realizes that the rate of descent is much greater than anticipated and that his pants are suddenly full? I can appreciate the kickback against safety nazi types, but sometimes, just because you can doesn’t mean you should. The giro boat is surely one of those moments in time where it was better to just say “no”.
(Thanks to Keith Turk for the tip!)
And thus the flat top hair cut became popular!
Looks like a wet version of an autogiro. They’re supposed to be surprisingly more safe than you’d think. But then, that’s what people say about helicopters, which clearly shouldn’t work either.