Pontoon Boat & Deck Boat Forum

Hey everybody, I recently sat through a presentation on this liquiglide material. It was aimed more for my industry, but I figured this has instant application potential for our boats. When underway, we fight friction at every location the toons touch the water. It is the primary factor that limits our speed. You can argue that the bow of the boat tends to just plow through water, but actually, water is moving around the toons. The rate at which we displace water is directly related to how fast those little water molecules can move past the aluminum. Now, watch the video(s) below:

http://liquiglide.com/videos/

Can you imagine how much faster we could go with a nearly frictionless surface between the point of contacts between the boat and the water. Granted, we'll still suffer a bit from "plowing" through the water, but there is a lot of surface area in contact with the water. Removing the drag created from that friction can be huge!

Of course, going completely frictionless isn't always the best idea

Interesting! Is it a coating or something in the material?

I guess it is a coating that is sprayed on then that coating needs to interact with a special fluid. When the two materials combine, it creates the surface that doesn't allow any bonds to form between the water and aluminum. It is a pretty painless process.

Pontoon boats in their current configuration are really displacement hulls pushing through the water. Most full hulled fiberglass boats are planning hulls that get on top of the water--faster and more efficient than any pontoon/tritoon.

Any pontoon boat will hit a wall around 30 mph where massive amounts of horsepower are required to get the boat any faster.

Modern pontoons or tritoons with lifting strakes fool displacement hulls into getting on top of the water. The wall rises to about 40 mph on most straked toons running 150 hp motors.

It's unfortunate that our party barges cannot be made into planning hulls, but it's just the design that limits speed.

Every boat is a compromise in many ways and every boat has its limitations in performance.

Bamaman - I think you are missing the point. It is the physical characteristics of our boats that make this material a must-use. We are displacing water; therefore, the water has to move around the pontoons. There is a considerable amount of drag created from that proecess. This will make that drag essentially zero, so we will be able to see considerable speed increases.

I should say that this is a spray-on material that can be applied to existing boats.

Be sure and get plenty of gps speeds before and after to show us

C_M_25 wrote:Bamaman - I think you are missing the point. It is the physical characteristics of our boats that make this material a must-use. We are displacing water; therefore, the water has to move around the pontoons. There is a considerable amount of drag created from that process. This will make that drag essentially zero, so we will be able to see considerable speed increases.

Displacement hulls have been using drag reducing coatings for years and believe me there is a lot of money that goes into the reduction of drag as drag equals fuel and fuel usage equals reduced profits..... To which I'm talking about ships; there are some very high tech coatings used on our bottoms but no matter how slippery you simply can only get X from displacement hulls no matter what. Now that is not to say that there is not some room for improvement but at what cost as the returns diminish? Ever drop a rag on the finished hood of a drag car? that rag will slid off faster than the speed of light due to the hi tech wax finish applied to the drag car as it does make a difference but its not a huge night and day difference it is mere fractions of a second...

C_M_25 wrote:Hey everybody, I recently sat through a presentation on this liquiglide material. It was aimed more for my industry, but I figured this has instant application potential for our boats. When underway, we fight friction at every location the toons touch the water. It is the primary factor that limits our speed. You can argue that the bow of the boat tends to just plow through water, but actually, water is moving around the toons. The rate at which we displace water is directly related to how fast those little water molecules can move past the aluminum. Now, watch the video(s) below:

http://liquiglide.com/videos/

Can you imagine how much faster we could go with a nearly frictionless surface between the point of contacts between the boat and the water. Granted, we'll still suffer a bit from "plowing" through the water, but there is a lot of surface area in contact with the water. Removing the drag created from that friction can be huge!

Of course, going completely frictionless isn't always the best idea

Buy a boat, try it and let us know the results

teecro wrote: there are some very high tech coatings used on our bottoms

I'm sorry, butt, I just couldn't resist! (,)

Bryden24shp wrote:

teecro wrote: there are some very high tech coatings used on our bottoms

I'm sorry, butt, I just couldn't resist! (,)

Great minds, you saved me the post

It looks like the coating some car manufactures are offering to make their cars "self cleaning"

I want to think that sometime late in the last century, there was an inventor looking for an additive for paints that would inhibit, if not prevent, graffiti paint from sticking as the surface would be too slippery. He then tried it on the bottom of a boat and found out that he couldn't reliably steer it due to the lack of friction. Kinda like driving on ice.

So in this case, should it actually work as advertised, methinks some fins would be needed to hold a boats track. And no, I don't mean those tappyfins.

A coating that would reduce friction and help protect the hulls would be great! "I would like to see some before and after testing and longevity tests!" said the interested consumer.

I'll bite. So what are the coatings that fast attack subs use? It feels like shark or dolphin skin.

Check this.....
http://www.asknature.org/product/9db08f ... b33f64ca50