If you spend a lot of time on boats (I don’t, but it’s kind of an aspiration) you’re no doubt familiar with the sensation of roll. If you’re prone to seasickness, that rolling might be keeping you off the high seas entirely and limiting your ability to “vibe” or “chill” — it’s fucking disgusting.
But there’s a company called Seakeeper that sells a little gyroscope you can put in your boat to keep it from rolling almost entirely. Check it out these jabronis goofing around with it:
It’s cool! If I had a boat — and again, I do not have one — I’d be all over this little thing until I realized the cheapest, smallest one meant for 23-29 footers costs about $15,000.
Still a neat idea — seal a heavy flywheel in a vacuum, get it spinning at around 10,000 RPM and tilt it to counteract the rolling and the rolling stops. It’s cooled by a glycol and water mixture and, according to Seakeeper, it requires very little power. The company makes big ones for boats up to 85 tons and says it can rig up several of those 3,920 lbs, $231,800 units to stabilize boats even bigger than that. I bet!
Here’s how the small one works:
This may be a stretch for your aluminum fishing boat, but if you were running a charter fishing operation, I’d imagine the ability to take a handful shit-housed groomsmen out after some lakers without having one of them hoark all over your deck would make such a gizmo worth the time spent on a credit application.
It would be fun to put one in the trunk of a Lemons car and rip it around a track like Laguna Seca. I wonder if the judges would consider it safety equipment…
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