Jim Waltz's video: The Iguana Amphibious Tactical Watercraft with Deploy-able Caterpillar Treads

A French amphibious boat that employs caterpillar treads instead of wheels has seduced the U.S. Navy. In late 2020 it bought two of them, called Iguana Interceptors, for shallow-water surveillance missions. The Iguana is the only fast boat in the world with caterpillar tracks. It was designed by a company, Iguana Yachts, founded in 2008 by Antoine Brugidou in Normandy, on France’s Atlantic coast. The coastline there sees some of the world’s biggest tidal ranges, and that was a problem for Brugidou, a boating enthusiast. If he wanted to take his pleasure boat out at low tide and come back at high tide, he couldn’t haul his boat down to the shoreline and then leave the vehicle and trailer on the beach—they’d be underwater by the time he came home. The answer was to give the boat retractable caterpillar treads so it can rumble down the beach and into the water without needing to be towed. This solution not only does away with the need to have a dock, as the boat can be kept on dry land, but it also keeps the hull sleek. It’s like an iguana, a reptile that stays streamlined in the water by tucking its front legs under its belly when it swims. When aluminum arms lower the kevlar and rubber caterpillar tracks to the ground, the 30-foot-long, 10.5-foot-wide, 4.4-ton vessel lifts about three feet off the ground. A retractable ladder at the back allows access on and off the boat. The craft may appear to be unstable, but Poirier said 11 people, each weighing some 176 pounds, can stand in it while it was on its caterpillar tracks and it remains “extremely stable.” Once the boat has trundled down into a minimum of 1.8 feet of water, the tracks fold flush back into the hull without compromising its hydrodynamic properties—you’d never guess there was anything unusual about it. Music: "Homeworld Collapse” by Arthur Vyncke | https://soundcloud.com/arthurvost Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en_US Concept Boat barco de concepto barco conceito barca di concetto Konzeptboot 概念船 コンセプトボート अवधारणा नाव konsept tekne Amazing boat tolles Boot barco incrível barca incredibile barco asombroso geweldige boot 很棒的船 素晴らしいボート अद्भुत नाव muhteşem tekne electric boat barco elétrico barca elettrica elektrische boot elektrisk båt perahu listrik bateau électrique elektrisk båd Elektroboot 電動船 電気ボート elektrikli tekne बिजली की नाव Torqeedo Solar watercraft Solar boat barco solar barca solare solbåd zonne-boot Solarboot perahu surya bateau solaire güneş teknesi ソーラーボート 太陽能船 सौर नाव