Broken Turbo fin- July 4 advice sought!

Hey All, hope you are enjoying Independence day and out on the water.

I’m camped on Pelican Beach on Cypress Island in the San Juans, camping with family and friends through Monday. This morning I was out fishing and in the way back got into heavy current. Pushing near shore, my front drive fin hit a rock and the metal rod snapped off up in the threads (see pics).

When I get back I’ll replace it, and get a backup. For now, questions re: how to salvage the next few days fishing:
- I have read you can use on pedal only, but it’s inefficient. Anyone done this and can lmk what to expect (for planning fishing)
- Any short-term fixes? Looks pretty jacked, I may need to replace the piece that the rod screwed into (rest of rod is broken off up in there)

Will welcome any advice, esp if before incoming high at 6pm tonight! I had a sorting full repair kit planned for this week but didn’t get to it, need officially underlined.

Sorry about your fin mast.  If you go one fin only it would increase the stress on that side of the unit.

Paddles worked in the dark ages before mirage drives.

If you opt to paddle try tying your rudder handle stationary it will track better when moving forward, but if it’s down will want to turn on you.

Thanks for the ideas! Determined to make this work, will go lighter on it- hoping shown solution can get me through the evening bite!

Good luck!  But, paddles do work extremely well, especially if you have a Revo. Outback...not so much. When I paddle my Revo I stow the rudder and it tracks just fine.  Hopefully that doesn't fall apart and you loose the whole fin. 

Having bent an outback mast on the sow, or one of the pigs in Tillymuck Bay, I can only offer the following advice:

1) Call Mojo on your radio and have him tow you to shore. Paddling an Outback, especially against wind or tide, is just...not effective for anything but getting you home.

2) When he gets you to shore, have him use the piece of pipe he carries in his repair kit to gently bend the mast back into alignment. This won't help you, because yours sheared off, and you'll have to drill it and use a screw extractor to remove the remains of the mast. Do check for stress cracks in the plastic. Nah, actually better to just replace that part, too.

3) Failing the above, in your situation, I would dig my backup drive out from the front hatch and resume operations. Don't have a backup drive ? Fix that for next time so this isn't the only trip ruined.

All, thanks for the advice and more. In the end the zip tie fix lasted for a few miles of slow going, got me to the spot and then broke. I had one more set if zip ties and rigged it again but saved it as a backup and paddled the Outback and jigged the last couple days.

Takeaways:
- Putting together a repair kit this week. Welcome any suggestions, lists. As a previous/still sometimes paddler the volume of gear with the Hobie gets to me but I do love the functionality. Considering the backup drive now too, esp for trips
- There may be a Revo in my future one day. The Outback is great but there are days when I like to cover distance and it’s clunky for that. Esp w/o the drive in place
- These are all first world problems. Scrapped together another 12 hours on the water, caught some fish (no salmon though), hard to beat being out esp in the early hours. Adjust and move forward

Other than that did not see a lot of chinook marks. Was on Cypress July 3-6, was at Eagle Bluff zone 3 days as well as areas on the E side. Pretty good amount of bait though, so hoping they are still on their way. Saw a couple of nice fish boated. Getting up to Orcas next week, hope to get my game back on. Still needing more pedal fitness to get up to respectable levels but need to bust out that repair asap!

A backup drive is great, I keep it in the vehicle for the next outing.  It does not have to be the 180.  In fact if you do not need the 180, the turbo fins on the V2 drive have more surface area.  I feel like my newer Revo is not quite as fast as the previous one with the Gray V2 drive. But, I also noticed I am not as fast running on land as I was in 2015 either.  Anyways, you can save about $450 bucks on a back-up by getting a regular gray V2.

Postscript: having bought my Outback at Outdoor Emporium in Seattle, I reached out to them to ask about parts availability. I was able to find the mast as a solo part online, but getting the hub bit sorted looked ugly and getting the mast expedited was going to be spendy.

Enter NWKA’s own kredden. Kevin’s a lead for the Hobie program at OE, after a short call going over the situation and options I was looking at he sent a note to Hobie and told me he’d get back to me.

In the meantime he broke down a spare drive he had and sorted a solution for me borrowing from some existing items. I’m back in business after a short and inexpensive fix. Big thanks to Kevin, I’ll be on the water this weekend and next week’s round 2 San Juan’s chinook foray is back on.

For takeaways, I think it’s key to load up on backup items as well as have a relationship with a good local shop in order to minimize down time. The parts aren’t easily accessible and are spendy. There’s a backup drive (at min for parts) in my future. I’m also looking at a revo for next year, I like the efficiency. The break I had happened pretty quickly and easily (not crazy impact) and as the top of the stainless mast was locked up inside the hub it was unfortunately not a great candidate for a field fix. Live and learn, psyched to get back on the water.

I had this exact issue just this last week while crabbing out at Tillamook Bay.  The threaded part of the mast on my V2 turbo fin sheared off.  I thought it might be a pain to get the broken part out but surprisingly, it wasn't even in the boom. 

The easy fix for me was to break out the tap and die set and rethread the mast.  On the other end, there's a hex head screw which I replaced with a longer screw I had on hand to fill out any extra space in the fin.  Saved me $32.  https://westcoastsailing.net/hobie-mirage-drive-180-v2-mast-turbo-adjustable/