Kite boating is a cool concept but a boat is expensive and another kite purchase to talk the wife into, so I was thinking maybe anyone got an ideas that we could colaborate to make a buggy to boat conversion so some kitesurfers or buggyers with LEI's could have another vehicle to kite with? I figured a good baseline is replacing the wheels with some type of pontoon....(as I have spoken of earlier, this is more of a coloboration though)

K peas (and carrots),
Nick
NPWfever

Doesn't work, read the evolution of the kite boat.

http://www.canadianwindrider.com/products/watercraft/kitecat...

Scroll down past the kiteboat specs and you'll see a series of pics, click on them to enlarge them enough to read the text.

PL has been trying for probably 15-20 years to get as far as they have, and that's using some of the best stuff available and his R&D team. Worth the read if you really want to figure out how to make something that'll work, either that or make a cheap plyboard.

I think something like this might work for someone like me, a casual small lake flyer who might not have LEI's just foils so you need to stick with small lakes, and or close to shore. Note first pic= buggy with wheels, second is with pontoons. Also there might be fins on the rear depending on whether of not there is "drift"

If you plan on using foils make sure you have a place to stow a paddle, you'll need it!

I think you'd be better off looking for a cheapo kayak with a skeg and rudder to play with. (and don't forget the paddle)

About 3-4 of PL's designs were based off a standart trike buggy setup with pontoons instead of wheels, seems they didn't track as good as one would hope.

The main problem is that the buggy wheelbase (overall length and width) does not allow for enough displacement for when the kite gets sideways of you and it just pulls you right overboard, flipping the buggy. You can't get enough power out of the kite to pull you without being flipped. The geometry of the setup is just wrong. This is why PL had to move to a wider longer setup such as the kite cat.

And the kite cat is just wide/long enough to hold a good edge when properly powered. As it is you can feel one pontoon digging in and the other one skimming along the surface. Much narrower and it'd be over.

Yeah if you havn't figured this out by now, I am persistant.

What about a more "cat" like design?

Now it looks a lot more like the "Quad Surfer"

PL's newest creation, only thing is that his setup is about 5ft wider than a conventional buggy, longer as well, almost the same dimensions as the KiteCat. He's got basically flat surfboards with what looks like rudders under them for tracking, planes easily and seems to be very agile. Good for waves as well. But by the time you modded a production buggy to get to this point you'd be better off starting from scratch with some spare metal.

You can see the Quad Surfer in the tail end of this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1KQsWDGOI8


One last thing to consider, recommended power source for the KiteCat or Quad Surfer is a 19m PL Venom in anything under 50kmh winds, so roughly 30mph you want a 19m Arc to power it. It's easy to underestimate the forces at work here.