Good to see the tried and true attitude of experimentation which has produced virtually all of our beloved board/wind/snow/surf sports is alive and well.
i can only imagine the end goal is that elusive mythological aim of being towed along behind your loyal dolphin...
Stop horsin' around...
Ever hear the joke about the deaf dwarf with a speech impediment who went to buy a horse...
so........
something has been on the back of my mind for years, and never made sense.
i tried to 'skurf' behind a 12hp dinghy once upon a time. it didnt really work, not enough power.
i now see that just "one horse power" is required to tow a person on the plane. so i do realise that in my experiment all those years back there was more mass than just me and the surfboard... there was a tinpot dinghy, a skipper in the dinghy... ok a fuel can, a few beers... the motor itself... surely if we throw in one more horse power for the skipper chap, and another for the other stuff... no make it 2 damn it...
does it not stand to reason that you need no more than say 4 or 5 horsepower on a wee dinghy to get a chap on the plane (on a reasonably chunky surfboard mind you).
so when people tell me they have a boat and i say "woohoo, lets go wakeboarding!!" and they tell me that they only have a 20hp motor... whats that all about???
has the "horsepower" reference lost all relevance to the actual pull a real horse can produce???
i see boats with 200 horsepower. imagine a mob of 200 real live horses, and then imagine harnessing them up to a 20 foot boat.... surely they would tear the fkn thing apart???
or am i ignorant of the difference between 'real output' and 'torque' and 'equine flatulence'....???
anyone got a clue???
did this in fiji while waiting for wind!
good fun, filled in the time in the least 
Perhaps the best, certainly the silliest thread I've had the pleasure of perusing in a while. I have nothing to contribute, just appreciation. I'm still chuckling as I write.
Oh Wilbur!
with respect to what comes first the boat or the horse.
What you really are talking about here is tractive effort or torque.
IE a large 3 trailer road train only makes about 600hp but spews out more torque than 30 old ladies and a new born. Where as a hyabusa with twin turbos can make 700hp but couldnt pull 1 trailer.
There isint as much loss in the water as you would think. The issue with boat props is effeciency. IE Cavitation. A prop in effect is a screw and with the exception of variable pitch requires a certian speed and load / drag co effecient to maintain that effeciency. Anything outside of its effeciency bell curve would have exponential retardation with respect to its ability to maintain tractive effeciency.
