 All right, I've been getting this suggestion a lot so I feel like I should answer it in video Jamie, why don't you put a flywheel on your pedal boat? Then you only have to pedal like half the time and the rest of the time the flywheel will just keep you going I Think I can break this down to three main points. Why why this is not a great idea So a flywheel would be useful if you were in a car going up and down hills so when you're going down a hill you have an excess of energy and you're going too fast you have to hit the brakes so you Don't crash by going too fast or you can engage this flywheel And when you're going down and have all this excess energy you can put it into the flywheel So that when you go back up the flywheel will power you back up the next hill in a boat Always flat you're always driving on flat That's point number one point number two Putting a big heavy flywheel on a boat Means you're going to be sinking the boat deeper into the water, which means more Boat is in contact with the water, which means you have to push more water out of the way It's it's increasing the resistance of the boat moving. So you're just slowing down the entire thing by adding weight Plus you're using a valuable cargo weight That's point number two point number three This has to do kind of with human biology and a lot of energy systems work like this actually So the idea of the flywheel would be that you only have to pedal half the time I mean you could pick different numbers, but we're just gonna say half the time if you pedal half the time That means you have to pedal twice as hard To get the same overall speed, but you pedal twice as hard Just pedal like mad and then you get to rest so you do that for 30 seconds and you can rest for 30 seconds or minutes or minutes whatever Because you know a lot of people think you don't actually have to pedal harder But you have to get that you have to put the energy into the flywheel to be able to get it back out You can't get more energy back out than you put in so So to be able to pedal half the time you have to be putting half of your energy into the into the propeller to move And then you have to be putting half your energy into this paddle wheel, right? and Then you get to rest for half the time while the paddle wheel spins down uses up its energy keeping you going so that means you You output twice as much power for half the time. This is the basic equation now to test if this works Go to a gym and get on the bench press I put You'll have to change these numbers depending on how strong you're but put a hundred pounds on the bench press thing and Then bench press it as many times as you can That's not that much weight for me. I could do it a lot. I probably do it like a hundred times or something I don't know And kind of keep track of the rate you're doing it now go take a rest get a drink whatever come back now put 200 pounds which will which is double double now you're now you're doing double the double the force you're gonna need double the force To to bench press this now get in there and bench press it at the same rate. You can't slow down You got to do at the same rate because you actually have to double your power output So at the same rate you did the hundred pounds start doing the 200 pounds See how many you can do it if you can do it Half as many times as you can do the hundred pounds fine totally works I'm pretty sure you're not gonna come anywhere close the same reason you don't see runners in long road races Sprinting twice as fast as everyone else and Then stopping and resting and letting them all catch you And then when they get all their energy back sprint again and stop no You also don't see tour defense Cyclists pedaling like mad for 30 seconds and then just coasting for 30 seconds No, it's it's much more efficient to maintain a steady pace. So the flywheel is just Terrible idea on a on a pedal boat As far as I can tell anyway, is anyone tried it? I'm sure someone's tried it. But yeah, my brain's telling me it's no good What do you think?