hey, hobie /mirage drive owners....

well guys, someone else finally brought their own version of peddle power to their line.. so you are no longer the only ones with dual power option on your yaks...

what am i rambling on about?  well, this,  ;

http://www.nativewatercraft.com/ads/Pedal_Drive_Ad.pdf

hard to tell from that picture, but is that an addon part, or a built in?  If it's an add on and totally removable, that's a serious plus. 

I tend to liken that to when we screwed roller skates on a board.....called 'em "skateboards" .
I will stick with me P-13

Hard to tell from that image how it all really works. But one thing I think the full revolution pedal systems that have come out is missing, is that there's little room in the seating area for your feet to be spinning around. In order to accomplish this cleanly you really need to have your feet high in the air. That makes a funky seating position.

Also the propeller system is really prone to getting snagged up w/ junk. The beauty of Hobie's mirage drive is that there's only forward/back movement, it's fins almost never get tangled up, and it's always super easy to pull and clear the fins incase something really gets in the drive. In all my years  I've pulled it to clear junk only 10 times or so.

Hobie really did their homework on this and I think it shows in that all the other pedal systems out there never last very long. We'll have to see w/ this one.

Z

When i first pictured the Hobie Mirage drive before i went to the website and saw how it actually worked, that's how i thought it would be, with a propeller and pedaling full circles.


I like the flippers better.  The simplicity of what seems a complicated motion is brilliant and the parts seem like  it would be easy to replace, if something does break.

I can't seem to find one at any of the dealers websites ??

the more i look at it, the more i think it actually might be installed on some kind of detachable mount and dangle over the side.. like a lot of you have said, it sure is hard to understand the picture..

its a dedicated kayak with an opening for the drive.  I think it has an 8 or 10 to 1 gear ratio.  It'll be out this summer.  I look forward to it.  I think it'll be a great kayak for Florida backcountry but I'm not giving up my Hobies as they'll fish many environments the Native can't.