Dimpled boat bottom

[Major]

I was reading through a past month Professional Boat Builder magazine and saw an interesting little article. They were discussing the possable benefits of a dimpled bottom on a boat. By dimpled i mean the golfball pattern. In air its proven that it does lower the resistance but the interesting thing was that they said it would have an ever greater benefit in water.

Depending on how deep the dimples needed to be it would be a fun experiment to see what effect different size and shape dimples have. Since in boats we know we will move in one direction for the most part it would be an easy attribute to exploit.

Have any of you looked into this or have some ideas? I know its not a retrofit deal but its an interesting concept to me atleast. I wish i could get paid to test stuff like this.

[PaulJ]

Quick search on the internet found this site: http://www.hydeoutdoors.com/boats/randd/
follow the link to http://www.abraxasdesign.net/victory21/maintain.html and scoll down. Interesting that it seams at lower velocities, dimpling causes more drag, but at higher velocities (like golf ball) it reduces drag.

Paul J.