Inventor Kris floats idea of walking on water with his ‘FloatSki’ contraption

Inventor Kris Rogus (Image: ADRIAN LOS)

The 42-year-old entrepreneur from London’s East End has invented a ‘floating ski’ device with fins and flaps which he had demonstrated by a young model at Regent’s Park by the canal to cheers from onlookers.

The lifelong windsurfing fan has combined latest surfboard lightweight materials with aviation technology used in a Boeing 787 to devise a system for taking a watery stroll.

He uses skis with an intricate set of fins, flaps and hinges, described in his worldwide patent as “water walking apparatus with improved propulsion”.

Kris has spent the last five years working all his spare time to turn his hobby into a business from his small workshop under railway arches in Bethnal Green, not far from his home, and is now looking for crowd-funding to get his FloatSki creation off the ground—and into the water—after trials on the canal.

“I met lots of great people with lots of weird and wonderful projects when I first moved her from Poland,” he recalls. “They gave me the confidence to turn my dream into reality.

“I experimented with materials, foams, resins, stability and mechanism to create something light and reasonably fast for the water.”

Kris has poured his life savings into the project, getting materials and European patent protection for his design and supported by UK surfing legend Tris Cokes.

He developed his design using epoxy resin and EPS foam while all the mechanical parts have been made from carbon fibre, using the same technology as Boeing’s long-haul jetliner, to reduce the weight of each ski to around 10kg.

His FloatSki is ready for commercial use, aimed at the watersports industry with a market of one-and-a-half million people in Britain alone.