Rowing bicycle

Bicycle rowing, Derk Thijs,

When looking at rowing bicycles one designer seems to have really solved the problem, Derk Thijs.
The story of Derk's rowing bicycles is pretty long and started with his visually best bike. These vertical "oars" are a pleasing sight.

 Below you see the evolution, most photographs are from his own history page.

Derk has rowed some extraordinay distances (paris- rotterdam) with his bikes and also had some incredible records (45,1 km in one hour), Alpe d'Huez, tour de France one day in advance of teh peloton, built streamlines etc.

If you wonder what the performance is in moutains have a look at this youtube movie.

Rowing bike

Sculltrek

youtube movie of the sculltrek.
The scultrek website.

There are lots of rowing bikes of which I will write later.

This one is new to me and I wonder why the inventor chose this specific motion, which seems strange to me as both feet and body move forward during the stroke. This moving around of mass is inherently inefficient, this is where Derk Thijs has a better motion-force system.

Interesting mechanic and the flow of the motion looks interesting also.