Hello proa enthusiasts. We put together a video from clips taken this fall on a cruise to Canada.
http://www.youtube.com/user/ptwatercraft
We did not have a waterproof camera. Too bad, because we had LOTS of wind and heavy rain at times. This would have made for exiting video if we had had a waterproof camera.
In any case, we thrashed the #### out of the old girl on the way home and she seemed to love it. Lots of upwind in 30 knots or more of wind. The short clip of the boat sailing under reefed main only was taken in 35 to 40 knots and heavy rain.
The single outrigger motorboat is a boat I designed for my buddy Josh. It’s his family car and pickup truck. It’s powered by a 20 hp outboard and goes about 18 knots. He put 7200 miles on this boat in less than two years and sometimes carries huge stacks of plywood and other heavy things with it. 
I hope you like the video,
Russell

     

That is a great video, Russell. Thanks for posting it and thanks to your wife for putting it together. Exiting sailing. Here’s hoping the fat guy in the red suit can organise a water-proof camera in a few weeks for you and the missus

     

Thanks so much for sharing that with us.  Jzerro does look happy as a clam, but much faster.

Best,
Chris

     

Way cool! I read that older outboards burn about (HP/10_ gallons/hour) at full speed; newer ones about (HP/12) and 4-cycles as high as HP/15. This suggests this “pickup” may be getting as high as 13-14 mpg at this speed (my family’s old 16’ ski boat, with 55 hp and capable of 30 kts delivered 5.5 mpg, just for comparison). I bet he might do 30-50% better, at 14-15 kts (80% +/- of top speed)

This is pretty darned amazing, to me. I wonder, would a larger engine, running slower, do better or worse? I suspect (maybe) a bit better, per hour, but a bit worse, when amortizing the cost of the engines, but who knows?

Dave