The Gloop (gliding sloop)

I ripped this from a recent monthly newsletter of the Owls Head Transportation museum. It's a flight-of-fancy but actual prototype built in 1929. The idea is that this glider would be powered by sail power alone, somehow simultaneously floating up on the aircurrents. A quick analysis of the physics involved shows the impossibility, a forward speed sufficient to support the craft in flight would also require a greater wind in the opposite direction to provide that speed. 
Nevertheless a prototype was financed, built and tested. Although Swiss-born aviator John Domenjoz had a full career as a test pilot and stunt pilot in Europe and the Americas from 1916 through the twenties, he became interested in gliders, eventually coming up with this ludicrous device, even flight-testing it several times in 1929 and '30, being towed along the sands at Old Orchard Beach.