WICKIE




The bow thruster of ERIKA takes advantage of the fact that ERIKA has a keel.
A portion of the keel forms one of the 4 paddles of the paddle wheel thruster.
A ship with a flat bottom could be fitted with a 2- paddle thruster, but when it operates it would increase the depth of the ship,
and I considered that as not acceptable.
So I concentrated on thrusters that are integrated in the shape of the hull ('MAX' and 'MORITZ') and do not change the depth.
Recently I found out that 'Retractable Azimuth Thrusters' are used today on some ships and apparently are valued as an acceptable solution.
Compared to these retractable devices a paddle wheel that increases the depth a little bit seams to be no big problem, and so WICKIE was built.
WICKIE is a two propeller ship with a normal unspectacular hull shape. Two paddle wheel side thrusters are installed on the flat bottom.

Here the bow thruster and the stern thruster can be seen:


This is the first test run:



using both side thrusters:



moving around



bow thruster turn


Those thrusters seam to be quite powerful and could fit in any ship with a flat bottom!