Every time I pulled forward the boat seemed to pull back with no glide at all. There seemed to be a suction behind the transom holding the boat back. Recently Ray Electric Outboards, Inc. had the opportunity to do some quantitative tests on a 16 ft. Carolina Skiff with and without rake. The main purpose was to develop a reduced draft outboard boat but we took the opportunity to test for reduced drag also.
Rake reduces the power required to produce displacement speeds by one half.
Rake may be considered the first degree of streamlining. Likewise, the fishermen who fish Baltimore's heavily stocked reservoirs, some seven miles long, can get by with Ray outboards on aluminum jons but they don't often venture into the rivers or off shore with these boats. I have no qualms about using or selling inefficient electric boats in applications where they are efficient enough, but these applications are too few to allow for much expansion in the use of electric boats. We must produce electric boats for use on general waters, and this means we must produce efficient boats. The best must be tweaked for efficiency in all areas not only in the hull design but in the electrical and propulsion system as well.