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Comment by Phenomenit | Hacker News Reader

There is another video on their channel that shows the technology in rougher weather and sea, seems to work fine.

Which video? None of the videos I see show in rough conditions - the worst is probably "better than average" from spending time on the ocean.

This one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2i2Zf9WVlNY

All vessels have limits on the sea state they can handle, particularly small vessels. Very large vessels can generally handle much more. You can see how much more the traditional small patrol vessel is bouncing out there, my spine hurts just watching. I could see this being used for pilot vessels and harbor patrol craft, for sure.

Cool, definitely a smoother ride than the adjacent boat.

That isn't rough.

According to another comment, the Candela can handle waves of up to 1.2 meters. But about half of waves in the open ocean are 2+ meters. So this boat can't handle a normal ocean sea.

This is Sweden. I've lived in the east coast of Sweden for 10 years, never seen a wave and there is water everywhere.

Now I'm from Portugal, so… no comparison really.

Yes. The east coast of Sweden is the Baltic Sea, which is not an open ocean. This boat may be perfectly usable there. But that's still not a rough sea. Other than temperature, that is water that I'd be perfectly comfortable swimming in.

I don't think the primary target for these boats is the ocean, they're mostly designed to operate on lakes, bays, rivers, etc

...so places where 5 knot speed limits are often enforced to prevent wakes.

Since they barely produce wakes when they are hydrofoiling, these rules can probably be changed.

But during the transition to the hydrofoil mode and back they produce a lot of waves and wake; seen this many times firsthand.

They have been given permission to drive at 12 knots because they produce much smaller wakes.

https://www.hamnen.se/varldens-snabbaste-elfartyg-far-kora-f...

Candela has been granted a waiver for the 12 knot speed limit in Stockholm, presumably because they make way less wake. Places like the San Francisco Bay are also clear examples of not-the-ocean but no-speed-limits.

https://candela.com/candela-p-12-enables-public-transport-fa...

Why do you need a ferry for a small lake? Anything you'd need a ferry for won't be much distinguishable from an ocean. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PebbX8uzyPI

The Great Lakes are not that choppy on average except during storms. But the primary use case would be along intercoastal waterways and rivers, which are also very calm except during storms.

I dunno, where there is boat traffic there will be chop as well. So it's intercoastal, low traffic areas.

> Why do you need a ferry for a small lake?

E.g.:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toronto_Island_ferries

* https://streetsoftoronto.com/guide-to-the-toronto-islands-fe...

How about Puget Sound (Seattle, Tacoma, Olympia...), where there are ferries all over. Several routes have "foot ferries" (no cars) offering rides with added speed to get the commuters to home or work across several miles of semi-open waters. Only rarely are waves a serious factor, and I don't know if that's even serious enough to affect this watercraft. Just one example of where this could really be useful and profitable. I can think of others.. Chesapeake Bay, Lake Champlain, Great Lakes...

What about between OAK and SFO terminals inside security, so that connecting flights (or East Bay passengers boarding and returning) could transfer to & from international gates at SFO?

With Google Maps I found a ferry on the Swedish lake Hjälmaren, between Vinön and Hampetorp.

https://sv-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/Vin%C3%B6lede... says the route is 5km long and takes about 16 minutes.

Wikipedia says the lake is 483 km², while Lake Champlain is about 3x bigger at 1,331 km².

From Google Street View it seems the mainland is visible for nearly every direction.

Oh! I found another ferry, a car ferry from "Boheden, 956 93" to "Sandudden, 956 93 Överkalix", according to Google Maps. The lake Djupträsket is 8.68km² and the ferry is a few hundred meters.

And one between Sund and Jarenleden, on the lake Stora Le, 131 km² but it's narrow and the ferry is only about 600m.

Sweden has a LOT of lakes, and most of them are narrow. I assume they were made by glaciers? I found those two ferries by looking for two roads ending on opposite sides of a lake.

The Stockholm area looks like this:

https://www.google.com/maps/@59.3284101,18.0369884,11.71z?au...

There are plenty of places where the water route is much, much, much faster than the land route, and there are plenty of islands that are only accessible by boat.

As you obviously have never been to Stockholm, feel free to pay us a visit. Its really nice in the summer! This is the ferry map for the archipelago: https://waxholmsbolaget.se/globalassets/kartor/hela-skargard... Note though that that doesn't include the line the P-12 will be in service on from next year as that is line 89 run by SL: https://sl.se/globalassets/linje-89.pdf

https://www.hamburg.com/visitors/hamburg-by/13965006/ferry/

There are plenty of places with large expanses of flat water where a fast electric ferry would be useful.

Yes, you get surface chop, but this craft is designed to keep foiling in up to 1.2 metres of chop. That’s heaps for many bays, estuaries, lakes etc.

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