An away victory for the Trìmali Team who won the European title of Human Powered Boat 2008. The competition, consisting of three different races, took place on 6 and 7 September in Hamburg which, thanks to its many kilometres of splendid canals, was a wonderful sight. 12 boats in the "multi-person boat" category and 4 boats with only one person, coming from Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Poland and the Czech Republic entered the competition. The Trìmali Team boat, called Trìmali One, is a trimaran with an azimuth propeller driven by one rider, whose main skills are speed and manoeuvrability. The team consisted of Luca Ghersi (Pleasure Craft Product Line) as rider and Giovanni Vacca (Naval Vessel Product Line) as support staff.
The first day was given over to the long distance race, 10 km along the canals of the Alster river and the lake of the same name arriving in the heart of the city where the crowds on either side, including a lot of tourists, cheered the arrival of the boats. Trìmali One arrived first in its category and achieved an important sixth position after a long contest with the "multi-person" category boats.
The following day the two fast races offered great excitement to both public and participants; the slalom occurred among closely-placed buoys, necessitating great agility and manoeuvrability skills.
The biggest challenge was between the two fastest boats propelled by a single rider, ETA and Trìmali One, the Italian boat obtaining the best time for most of the race, beating all the boats in the multi-person category; unfortunately, the German boat initially hindered by technical problems managed to achieve the best time right at the last minute, thanks to the replacement of a part made available by another team.
The second race was held over a hundred metres, requiring the boats to pull all the stops out. The riders, spurred on by the public and the incitement of their team-mates, made the boats literally fly over the water. Second place again for the Italian boat which thus obtained, thanks to its victory in the long distance race and its two placings, a historic record in the results table, following last year's third place in the world championship held in Rostock. The Trìmali Team does not intend to stop here; indeed, the joy of victory is an incentive to improve the boat in view of next year's professional competitions, among which the International Waterbike Regatta and the 2009 World Championship.

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When talking about waterbikes we don't mean the ones you can find on almost every lake during summertime.
But there are still some similarities between those boats and the ones you can see when students of naval architecture from European universities meet for a sportive competition as the Waterbike European Championship and Waterbike World Championship.

The idea of water bike racing was appeared in Hanover, Germany in 1979. In 1980, senior naval architecture students want to apply their theoretic knowledge to practice, as a result of this they edit a race at Manschsee (Hanover) after Delft (Holland) participate in this race and it became international.
Other universities in Europe have also been interested in the races and then Poland, Italy and Croatia participated.
Not much work done on first designs however, considerable improvement was recorded, Today's
waterbikes are High- Tech vehicles that combine material and working hours worth some thousand Euros. And the speed changed over the years, too. Instead of struting over the water to enjoy the day and the view those waterbikes fly over the water with a speed up to 12 knotes and leave amazed spectatores behind.
The rules say that the boats have to be driven by the legs of two cyclist. You can even find the commonly used propulsion, the pedalwheel, on some of the waterbikes but then there is an end to the similarities.
The teams compete in various disciplines in which they have to show not only the maneuverability and the speed of their boats but also the skills of the drivers. Sometimes when one boat does not meet the expectations you can watch its drivers getting wet unvoluntary. And even the capsizing happens in different ways with going to the side or to the front as the favorite choices of the boats.
About 25 to 30 teams from whole Europe meet every year which makes 250 to 300 participants with up to 30 boats. The boats and their drivers compete in six disciplines on two racing days. The whole regatta lasts for four days including the trip to and from the regatta place. During the racing days, there will be approximately 1,500 to 3,000 spectatores to watch the races every day.