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PostPosted: Sun May 18, 2014 7:18 am 
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Joined: Sun May 11, 2014 5:18 am
Posts: 36
Location: Newcastle NSW Australia
On Lake Macquarie yesterday ended up towing my two nieces using firstly pedals of the mirage drive on my AI and then the Evolve motor. We were in a hurry to get back for a scrumptious dinner my wife had made for us all. Videos below. Was astounded at the power of pedals and Evolve motor to tow so fast.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILe49sy ... tube_gdata
Towing with pedals

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQItVVk ... tube_gdata
Towing with evolve motor

Cheers
Ciaran


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PostPosted: Sun May 18, 2014 11:42 am 
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Joined: Sun May 04, 2014 11:08 am
Posts: 89
Location: Rochester NY
Very cool, I was thinking of towing my daughter and her friends on a tube of some sort, I don't have the tube, but I was thinking they would enjoy it. Depends on if the wind gives us enough speed of course.

Or, since I have the TI, if I had two adults pedaling hard, I wonder if that would give them enough of a thrill on a tube?


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PostPosted: Sun May 18, 2014 1:58 pm 
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Joined: Sun May 11, 2014 5:18 am
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Location: Newcastle NSW Australia
Well that tow you see was up to 10kmh with the evolve motor and about 8.7 Kmh with me pedalling. So what is the minimum speed to tow the tube? is the next question.
Re sailing what ever the wind speed is the AI can go.
Cheers
Kieran


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PostPosted: Sun May 18, 2014 3:10 pm 
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Joined: Sun Apr 20, 2008 6:18 am
Posts: 3057
Location: Sarasota,Key West FL
Ciaran1957 :
We discovered that using the TI as a mother ship you can easily tow multiple kayaks. We also have a 4 person inflatable boat that we tow behind our TI, when it is full of gear (scuba tanks, BC's, coolers, etc you can hardly tell it's behind the boat (about 15-20 ft straight back behind the TI seems to work the best as it doesn't interfere with your steering). When we also have kayaks to tow I usually have them hang onto the raft. One thing we discovered (the hard way) is kayaks need to have people on them, not just gear, the first wave or boat wake that comes along tips kayaks over when they just have gear on them.
We often have 3-4 adults on our TI (with the tramps), along with towing the inflatable, and sometimes extra people on kayaks. We actually have two inflatable single person kayaks that we just blow up if they are needed, and have some people ride on those. (party barge)....

The easiest to tow are mirage boats where if there is no or little wind, everyone pedals (4 mirage drives in the water), and the whole group moves along pretty nicely (especially if they have the Hobie kayak sail), we switch out people once it a while to get fresh legs, we call it the party barge.

With my motor and wing sails I have also towed other tandem islands several times now. What works best there is to have 25-30 ft of anchor line tied to my right rear aka bar, then to the front left aka bar on the towed boat. I then tow them behind and to the right of me at about a 45 degree angle from my rear. With both boats sailing full out and a little motor assist, plus pedal assist even in very light winds we can do 7-8 mph (basically I only seem to lose about 1 mph of speed), vs them sailing by themselves at 4-5 mph in low winds. We only do this when trying to catch up with a larger group of TI's out for the day (bringing up stragglers).

One thing we discovered is if you have people wanting to drift dive, you can't tow them behind the TI with one on each side (hanging on ropes tied to the AMA's). You simply cannot steer at all. Now if they want to hang onto the sides of the raft 20 ft behind, that works fine. But anyone in the water trying to hang onto the TI itself turns into a disaster because I can't steer the TI at all.
PS dragging people in the water is much harder that pulling a raft or kayak.
Hope this helps
Bob


Last edited by fusioneng on Mon May 19, 2014 6:51 am, edited 2 times in total.

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PostPosted: Sun May 18, 2014 11:42 pm 
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Joined: Fri May 08, 2009 5:06 am
Posts: 1701
Location: Lake Macquarie NSW AUSTRALIA
Hi Kieran. Good to see you getting some use out of the AI. You'd swear the AI was designed for Lake Mac. I don't know if you've boated in the area much but there are a couple of spots to watch out for. If you draw a triangle between Pulbah Island, Wangi shops and Wangi point, that area can get a bit scary in the wrong conditions. I've been caught 3 times in that spot and once found it impossible to get around the point to head North back home. The drop-over at Swansea Channel is also a well known trap for 'young players'. The wrong tide can have you beached in no time with a long drag to deeper water. A friend of mine had Amas on his Revolution and was upside down before he knew it in the channel due to tidal movement and his own mistakes ( his own admission ).

We'll have to catch up at some stage.

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Don't take life too seriously................it ain't permanent.


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PostPosted: Mon May 19, 2014 6:26 am 
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Joined: Sun May 11, 2014 5:18 am
Posts: 36
Location: Newcastle NSW Australia
Thanks for those great pointers. I kayaked on my old Feel Good TRY-Yak with my son from Wangi to Pulbah and did the channel in the dem AI from Hobie Belmont - ran aground not far from Milanos but got afloat again with not to much effort.
No probs at Pulbah though. Yes let's kayak the lake Russell.
Thank you for the invite and much welcome knowledge.
Cheers
Kieran


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