A Cycleboat in calm water.

A few years ago I was walking down a street in Austin Texas when I saw a group of folks sitting at a bar pedal by. Apparently, they were peddling a “Pedal Pub” on a PubCrawler tour. The Pedal Pub tour is advertised as traveling a “maximum speed is five miles per hour; just right for sharing good times with friends and drinking cold beverages as you pedal your way through downtown Austin!” Safe to say it was not what I expected to see, even in Austin. I have since learned that there are Pedal Pubs operating in 40 cities with 190 of these “Party Bikes” on the streets. Who knew?

I have recently learned of a waterborne version of the Pedal Pub called the Cycleboat. Instead of pedaling on streets, the pedaling passengers of a Cycleboat pedal a 24′ pontoon boat, turning a stern wheel to propel the craft through the water. The Cycleboats can accommodate between 14-16 passengers and are currently operating in bays, rivers, and lakes at 20 locations around the country. If the pedal-powered stern wheel doesn’t provide enough power, the boat also has a 30 hp gasoline outboard engine.

A Cycleboat will soon be operating on the Hudson, based in Liberty Harbor on the New Jersey side of the river. New York City Cycleboats is expected to start on May 3rd offering hour and a half BYOB tours to the Statue of Liberty.

The first question that comes to mind is how well the pedal-powered party boat will cope with the Hudson River?

The Hudson River near the southern end of Manhattan can often feel like an eight-lane maritime highway, with a steady flow of traffic in all directions from ferries, excursion boats, yachts, sailing dinghies, jets skis, cruise ships, tugs and barges, as well as the occasional tanker or bulker. The Cycleboat will be another of the myriad craft plying the waters around lower Manhattan.

In addition to the traffic, there is the current which can ebb at 2.4 knots. It is not clear how fast the Cycleboat can travel, but a couple of knots of current on the bow could significantly slow things down.

And then there is the chop. In the area where the Cyleboat will be operating the river widens and the prevailing summer south-westerly winds can blow against the ebb current, setting up a significant and somewhat nasty chop. The motion of the short chop and spray which the chop can throw up might make the pedaling considerably less fun.

Overall, we can only wish the new venture well. It will interesting to see how a Cycleboat handles the mighty Hudson.

NYC Cycleboats 2019 promo from NYC Cycleboats on Vimeo.