Hi All,
I've been reading about the AI for a few weeks and learned about the AI after seeing a guy with a decked out fishing kayak with foot pedals, fish finder and all kinds of gear. After looking it up on the Hobie website The Adventure Island with the sailing capabilities caught my eye. And I haven't stopped thinking about it since.
So after work tonight, I picked up my AI at the dealer and got a quick intro how to use everything on the boat. We tied it down to my truck with a hitch extender and I picked up the wife and rode over to the causeway. The ease of putting it together was better than expected. It was a piece of cake. The one thing I screwed up was the furling line and it took awhile but I eventually straightened that out after I paddled out into some water where I could adjust things like the seat and lines. It's a good thing I figured it out in the water because if I tried to sail into the beach I wouldn't have been able to roll the sails up and that would have been a comical site I'm sure.
The pedals worked beautiful. Easy to use and very powerful. After I got the sails working correctly, I caught some wind and off I went. What a blast. I wasn't good at reading the wind but did some experimenting and had no problem navigating where I needed to go. I had confidence because of the pedals and paddle backup. No worries.
I was only out for about 45 minutes because it looked like a storm coming but tomorrow morning I'll try it again.
I have a 2008 model and the one thing I'm a little nervous about is the new 2008 latch for the mast seems loose. I worry that the mast may fall out because before launching I yanked on it and it came out once. Kind of like the latch didn't have enough tension.
The seat was kind of a pain but I probably just need to adjust it better.. It kept slipping out of the pegs and wasn't comfortable with the lifevest I bought.
But all in all it was a great experience and my first time ever sailing by myself. My wife took this picture.