When you're down and troubled and need some loving care, and nothin', nothin' is going right I do what Carole King does and take a folder of my patent specifications down from the shelf.
Whereas Kate Moss never got out of bed for less than ten thousand pounds, these days I cannot get excited about projects that look set to shift less than ten thousand units.
Though I think this one might, despite its dating back nearly twenty-five years. Like the drone at www.teledrone.com though it's been revived by advances in electrical motors, specifically outboards of that type.
For bar none, rigid inflatable boats have blown every other type out of the water in terms of numbers. But like the guy in London who figured carpet cleaning could be better done by sucking instead of blowing, there might be nautical mileage in boats that are deflated instead.
And what else would you do on a Monday morning than give it a whirl? And armed with sheets of stretchable fabric and MDF ~ beside a vacuum ~ I did just that. And you can see the result at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLWW7XThBGU
Remarkable thing is, like many of the best inventions the RIB or rigid inflatable was effectively pioneered by a group of sea scouts and their leader at a school nearest the Bristol Channel. And all they did at the get-go was to add plywood at the bottom of the boat.
The advantage of a deflatable boat however is that it could be flat-packed and ready to deploy in seconds, and cheap as chips: think of it as IKEA on water.
Ultimately whether I advance this or the drone depends on which I see as being the most fun. And as I can sit on it and float gently down a stream like the Leeds and Liverpool canal then this has to be a contender, as life is but a dream. And as it appears from the work of Desmond Hoare (RIB), Christopher Cockerell (hovercraft) and Tony Blair (Iraq), we've a habit of blowing things up and being left deflated...
The test ~ with my trusty Miele on its lowest setting ~ sounded like a descent to the Titanic in a home-built submarine. Watch on full volume, therefore, and be afraid.
