Recreational water craft

Abstract

A recreational water craft of uncomplicated design and construction is provided herein which is adaptive to be manually powered by one or more crew members or readily converted from manual power to sail (or supplement by sail) without loss of stability or increase in complexity of operation. This water craft possesses the attributes of a tri-hull and/or catamaran vessel, wherein the crew is supported and operates such vessel from a centrally located platform or main float which is connected to, and flanked on either side by, an outrigger float or pontoon. Each outrigger float is further provided with a vertical extension or riser to which is mounted an independently operated and manually powered paddle wheel. The paddle wheels, upon mounting to the riser, are positioned in the open wells located to the port and starboard sides of the platform and inboard of each of the outrigger floats. The paddle wheels each have a handle or hand grip on their inboard surface, which can be adjusted relative to the axis of rotation of each of such wheel, to accommodate the crew member's reach and his location on the main float, and thereby modulate the amount of force, and physical exertion, required to rotate the paddle wheel. Insofar as each of the paddle wheels is independently driven, the water craft's directional movement (steering) is determined by the relative amount of thrust created by rotation of either paddle wheel or by the counter-rotation of each such paddle wheel relative to one another.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.