Your Questions About Wind Generators For Boats

What is the name of this book set in the future?

It’s main antagonist is a guy in the future hiding and wrtiting in a journal. If he is caught bad things happen. I remember there was a bit about job assingments like street sweepers and lamp lighters. I have already made a list of the books it’s NOT
The Giver
A Brave New World
A Clockwork Orange
Logan’s Run
1984

Would a muscle powered hybrid make sense for a boat’s drivetrain?

I am planning to build a muscle powered commuter boat, using pedals, as on a bicycle.
Now one of the challenges I face is transferring as much of the human motion as possible to the propeller.
I am not sure how much of a loss through friction there is when using steel gears or other setups, but I just had this idea pop up in my head instead:

What if the pedals only drove an electric motor, which generates DC electricity, which is then transferred straight to an electric motor driving the propeller?

The advantage of that would be that I could also feed solar or wind energy into the whole thing, somehow (that one needs some more brooding over, I know).

But would that make at least a little bit of sense, or is this hopelessly inefficient?