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We did almost the same thing last time we were up at rainbow river. Which brings up a funny story. First, my wife is much more a kayaker vs a sailer and isn't real impressed with my modded out TI, she much prefers just straight up kayaking (she hates all my gadgets).
We were staying at the best western hotel right there in crystal river and had the TI on the roof (their is a nice launch right there). Day one I started setting up with the wife saying why all this junk, lets just paddle in kayak mode and leave all your crap (AMA's, massive sails, motors, etc) in the car and just kayak, OK....
It was pretty windy that day and we came back 5-6 hrs later pretty exhausted.
Day two: She suggests why don't we take the sails, ama's, motors, etc today....ha ha ha... Apparently peddling was a little much for her.
We rented 4 tanks at the dive shop (we had all our scuba gear with). We went out and dove one of the springs, had a blast, then afterward went out into the gulf a little and sailed around a while, she had a blast.
That was a couple years ago, since then she prefers the fully rigged setup lol.
What we didn't know at the time, and I didn't discover unti a couple weeks ago, is you can have your cake and eat it too... (Both kayak mode and adventure mode on the same outing).
I was kayaking the Oscar Shear state park river with my AMA's folded in, motors up, and the sail furled laying on the hull because I had to go under several low bridges, but also wanted to go out to big water afterward so I had all my junk....
Kayaking with the AMA's folded in produced a lot of drag. I always carry extra rope and noticed there is a lot of vertical play on the AMA's when folded in. Just screwing around I ran a rope between the folded AMA's and cinched it tight, pulling the AMA's completely out of the water (jacked up in the air).
Boy what a difference that made in kayak mode. The boat glided along as if in regular kayak mode (the TI in kayak mode glides along like no other kayak BTW). We all already know weight is not a bg factor with the TI since whether your solo or dual your speed changes very little (figuring a human weighing 200 lbs). So I figured, and think I proved out in the scheme of things the extra 70 or so lbs of my motors, sails, etc and the 40 or so lbs of the AMA's up in the air made almost no difference in my kayaking pedaling speeds (no more than having multiple people on board, especially my wife who 'fake pedals' (lol). I catch her at that all the time, we are pedaling along, I call out are you pedaling 'yes', I ask again are you pedaling 'yes', I stop pedaling and the boat stops (lol), I'm on to her game, but don't really care, I enjoy the company.....
Next time your out kayaking try pulling the AMA's up and let me know if you get the same results I did.
FE
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