Awesome Boats

The anchors on big ships are enormous and incredibly heavy. While some boats use powerful winches to lower them, some ships let gravity do the work. This short clip shows the incredible force an anchor exerts on its chain as it drops quickly toward the ocean floor. It looks like a metal snake slithering through the desert as it kicks dust up onto the deck.

In most cases, if a boat lists enough to capsize, there’s no turning back. But Taiwan’s Lungteh Shipbuilding is testing a boat that can right itself even if it flips upside-down. Built for Hong Kong’s fire service, the boat can roll and return to an even keel in 6 to 10 seconds. There are smaller self-righting vessels, but Fire Boat 12 is the largest yet.

Mr. Ho Thanh Che spent a crazy amount of time building this unique boat. He made the floating UFO by sculpting a sand and cement form to mold a fiberglass shell. He outfitted it with acrylic windows, solar panels, LED lighting, and motorized doors. The UFO skims across the surface of the water and is powered by the same kind of engine you’d find in a jet ski.

If you’ve used a 3D printer, there’s a good chance you’re familiar with Benchy. This little boat model is used to benchmark print quality. While most people print Benchy as a palm-size model, Emily the Engineer thought it would be fun to make one that she could fit inside. However, the design required some modifications to keep the boat afloat.

This official LEGO set replicates a classic scene from Steven Spielberg’s breakthrough flick Jaws. Based on a fan submission to LEGO Ideas, the 1497-piece kit includes a detailed model of The Orca, minifigs of Brody, Hooper, and Quint, and a brick-built shark named Bruce, ready to chomp down on everyone. Drops 8.6.24.

Don’t have the balance to use a stand-up paddleboard? Decathlon teamed up with Outercraft to design the Hydrobike – a unique watercraft that combines a paddleboard, pedal boat, and catamaran. It has inflatable floats, a single-seat, and modular storage for outdoor gear. It’s a proof-of-concept at this point, but we hope to see it go into production.

Hot tubs are great, but the view you get while soaking remains static. If you want to see more of the world while you warm up, you need a hot tub boat. While you could spend thousands on one of Yacht Tubs’ professionally-built boats, David Rule shows us how it’s possible to build your own with stuff you can buy at the hardware store.

This wonderfully soothing video provides a close-up look at some of the teensy scale model submarines, boats, and ships floating in the water tanks at Miniatur Wunderland. If you’re ever fortunate enough to be in Hamburg, Germany, you must visit this incredible tiny world.

If you have a bunch of remote-controlled airplanes, wouldn’t it be fun to have an aircraft carrier to launch them from and land them on? James from Project Air spent months designing and building his 6-foot-wide, 12-foot-long carrier from polystyrene foam sheets and fiberglass. He also had to learn how to skillfully land planes on such a tiny runway.

When WhistlinDiesel isn’t accidentally lighting his Ferrari on fire, he’s torture-testing cars or modifying them in stupid ways. This video definitely falls into the latter category. For this build, Cody and his pals took a Dodge Challenger Hellcat, strapped it to a pontoon boat, and attached paddles to its rear axle. It seems to be better at splashing water than going fast.

Transferring technology and expertise from the road to the water, BMW is the driving force behind The Icon, the first maritime luxury electric vehicle. BMW teamed up with boat builder TYDE to create a visionary experience that progressively blends the ideals of luxury and sustainable mobility. In other words, it’s a glass-encased plaything for the one-percenters.

Handy Geng’s brother loves to fish. But when he’s out on the water, he doesn’t come back to land for hours on end. To help his bro, he engineered a crazy homebrew recreational vehicle that can drive into the water and has a living room, kitchen, and bedroom. He built its frame from steel pipe, then added PVC pipes for floatation. Turn on English captions.

While the idea of a rocket-powered kayak sounds entertaining, that’s not what the guys at FliteTest made in this video. What they actually created was an electric-fan-powered kayak and built its engine to look like a rocket straight from the ACME Corporation, where Wile E. Coyote buys all his gadgets.

When it comes to horsepower, more is always better, right? Maker and modder Peter Sripol decided to test that theory by attaching a ridiculous number of outboard motors to a miniature R/C boat. So at what point does the number of motors officially reach overkill… or does it ever?

Can wayward pickleballs float? Asking for friends booked on AmaWaterways’ river voyages, where summer cruisers will be the first ever to play America’s fastest-growing sport while sailing past picturesque towns and castles along Europe’s gorgeous Danube river. AmaWaterways has plenty of extra balls stowed away in case of the occasional overboard slam/splash.

Paddling a kayak can take a lot of strength and isn’t very fast. In the interest of decreasing effort and increasing speed, inventor Colin Furze made a custom kayak paddle with a powerful motor and propellers to give things an extra boost. But is Colin’s idea a breakthrough or a bust?