Although there's nothing like cycling with a good tailwind, your bike and your body are only capable of catching a limited amount of that wind. The CycleWing was designed to help, acting as – you guessed it – a sail for your bike.
@ajlanes@walnutwalrus So a sail at the back like that will try to make you point into the wind. If you’re using it and the wind is behind you, a gust will impart a big turning force which will also tip you over sideways. The tipping moment will get worse as you turn into it.
My instinctive reaction to seeing this as someone who has sailed in following seas in a force 7 gusting 8 and experiencing exactly what that does to a four tonne boat with a rudder that’s larger than I am is, “deathtrap”.
@ajlanes@walnutwalrus I should also mention that in a sailboat with a keel, the further you tip, the greater the righting moment from the keel under gravity gets. This is because a sailboat is bottom heavy and the secondary stability increases the further it goes from vertical.
On a bike, the opposite is true: you are top heavy. What the wind starts, the weight of the rider will finish.
@goatsarah@ajlanes@walnutwalrus thankfully the Kickstarter* was a failure (14 backers still raise £2k+ of a £58k goal). Sadly (thankfully?) we do not get to see any (hilarious) videos of unexpected gybeing
* I looked to see whether either of them might have had *any* experience of sailing… they have a diagram at east…
@goatsarah @walnutwalrus I’ve been blown off my bike even without a sail!
@ajlanes @walnutwalrus So a sail at the back like that will try to make you point into the wind. If you’re using it and the wind is behind you, a gust will impart a big turning force which will also tip you over sideways. The tipping moment will get worse as you turn into it.
My instinctive reaction to seeing this as someone who has sailed in following seas in a force 7 gusting 8 and experiencing exactly what that does to a four tonne boat with a rudder that’s larger than I am is, “deathtrap”.
@ajlanes @walnutwalrus I should also mention that in a sailboat with a keel, the further you tip, the greater the righting moment from the keel under gravity gets. This is because a sailboat is bottom heavy and the secondary stability increases the further it goes from vertical.
On a bike, the opposite is true: you are top heavy. What the wind starts, the weight of the rider will finish.
Say hello to the cheesegrater tarmac.
@goatsarah @ajlanes @walnutwalrus thankfully the Kickstarter* was a failure (14 backers still raise £2k+ of a £58k goal). Sadly (thankfully?) we do not get to see any (hilarious) videos of unexpected gybeing
* I looked to see whether either of them might have had *any* experience of sailing… they have a diagram at east…
@penwing …or indeed of cycling…