Volga Hydrofoils Messageboard

Does anybody has had a high speed underwater collision with a foreign object such as a big piece of wood or something else like that?
Will the whole wing come of?

I read many stories of beautiful clean lakes and rivers. But hey man... this is Amsterdam.

Can the boat be safely used on water with foreign objects?

Regards,

Mark from Amsterdam

Good question!? I never heard about anybody who sank a Volga because of hitting something. But there are stories about swimmers and divers that got their heads chopped off.

Thans for you reply.
I just had this discussion with a friend. He thinks if you hit a big piece of wood like use on railroads the wing will come of and tear the boat.
Since there is lots of debri in Holland floating around I am wondering if the boat is suitable for this region.
Maybe PETER VENEMA knows. Peter, if you are reading this, do you have any experience with hitting foreign objects with your hydrofoil of the big Meteor in the Amsterdam Harbour?

Kind regards,

Mark Boom

Hi Mark,

The fear of hitting some large object at high speed also has me spooked. The Dutch Hydrofoil Page has some pictures of an incident like that with one of the Voskhod hydrofoils of Fast Flying Ferries. They hit a piece of wood of 5x10x20cm with the aft foil. The result was that the Voskhod could not stay foilborne anymore, and they had to call a diver to remove the piece of wood from the foil. After that they could continue service.

Now that was a Voskhod, which is a lot larger than our Volga's. I assume that a similar piece of wood will also hardly do any damage to a Volga. The mass of that piece of wood is low, and it is floating on the water, so the resistance is low.

A hardwood sleeper/cross-tie used on railroads however has a lot more mass (80kg) and can can have a lot more resistance in the water because of it's size (2m length). I guess any boat travelling at high speed will suffer some damage when hitting such a large piece of wood, but I doubt that it will rip your foil clean off. In the waters around Amsterdam I would be more worried about swimmers - hitting one of those will give a much bigger mess! So the best thing to do is to always look carefully at the water ahead for floating objects and heads. And don't forget to check your navigational charts - hitting the ground in shallow waters at high speed is definitely going to do some serious damage!

Cheers,
Maurits

Hi Maurits,

Thx for your contribution to my worries.
I myself have a 30 ft montecarlo offshorer with 2x 200 HP diesel.
Same system as volga as far as propulsion. V-drives with in my case bronze props and a special stepped hull.
I also had it liftes out of the water because of a very big rope entangled in the prop and pro axle.I do use wirecutters behind the props.
I travel slow a lot in the Amsterdam canals. The boatbuild is a very high quality polyester. 3,5 t weight. Very beautifull boat but I always wanted a volga. In case of a serious collision I am less concerned because of the rock solid boat and the so calles stepped hull.
With a little luch the will hardly be any damage in case of collision.

Are you situated in Amsterdam? If you have a Volga I am interested to take a look at your boat.

Regards,

Mark