Water striders slide agilely and quickly on the water surface with the spatial elliptical rowing trajectory, it has attracted the research interest of scholars. But the existing bionic robots did not realize the level of it and generally suffer from slow speed and weak load capacity. Inspired by the trajectory of the water strider, the influence of its shape, size and velocity to the robot speed was analyzed by the numerical method. Based on the optimization parameters, the dexterous driving mechanism with a single motor is designed to achieve the spatial elliptical rowing trajectory within the restricted size and weight. The robot is manufactured with a mass and load capacity of 863 g and 600 g, respectively. The experiment of the sliding motion on the water was carried out. Its forward and turning speed are 625 mm/s and 45 °/s respectively, and the speed/body length ratio is higher than the other similar robots. It also has been verified that the robot can slide in the disturbance environment with wind speed of 2.3 m/s and wave height of 210 mm.