Many of the passengers would suffer extreme injuries from the changes of velocity (up to 230 mph based on a loop radius of 3 x ship length) and rotation (unlike rollercoasters, or even airplanes during simple take-off and landing, passengers aren't normally strapped down).
How fast would the water have to be traveling for this to actually work? Pretty sure there was a waterslide built with a loop once and it infamously didn't work, but those work on gravity alone. With enough pressure it should be able to loop, right? Or would it just get wonky because it's a fluid? 🤔
I feel like this could be one of those things that works perfectly if you make a small model, but won't ever scale up due to reasons.
I was actually more curious about the water itself and forgot we were even talking about a boat lol. Could you force that much through an open loop without it sloshing back inward?
You just have to go fast enough. The minimum speed keeping you from falling out of a circular loop is sqrt(gr), with gravitational acceleration g and loop radius r. 10m radius requires 36km/h, which might be suitable for a Jetski. Larger ships need bigger loops to physically fit, and consequently larger speeds. It's quite surprising, but a monstrous 100m radius loop needs less than 120km/h.