2016 Everglades Challenge

There isn't a thread for this already? Or did I just miss it?

I'm taking my AI to Anna Maria Sound/Passage Key Inlet area tomorrow morning to watch those crazy Watertribers go by.

I just bought a Hobie TI, then heard about the Everglade Challenge. I'm staying at a place on Lemon Bay (ICH) @ Englewood , Fl. I was wondering if they will be going down the ICH or out in the gulf.

It really depends on the wind and conditions, i'm sure many of the kayaks will go down the ICW, the sail boats I think prefer open water where they can get clean wind. Weather looks nice it will be a downwind run light in the morning and picking up in the afternoon, pretty likely all the AI/TI's will be just offshore.
Winds will be from the north east in the morning so the normal nasty breakers down past Sarasota shouldn't be bad at all. Should be a really nice race this year.
FE

Tom:
Take lots of pics from passage key, try to take some pics of boats too ( passage key is a naked island, (lol).

Hopefully there will be a bunch of Hobies with the new spinnaker kits. Perfect year for them, looks like a downwind run all the way past Naples this year.
FE

Hey again Jim,

Again, great seeing you on the EC 2016 beach this morning!
I snipped the immediate below from an earlier post of your's (CaptnChaos) to this thread as I thought it more conducive to this thread's subject, the 2016 EC and did not want to "pollute" the original thread's subject of Hobie's new Spinnaker too much.

Snip/ (from CaptnChaos' post in the "We have two great new accessories for Hobie Islands!" thread)

There was (Snip/ Snip/) an AI with his own clever design of a furling spinnaker AND furling jib AND completely modified hull ... amazing engineering in his setup. His tribe name was island mutant. He had a back stay and side stays ... quite complex.

Spinnaker looks beautiful.

CaptnChaos

Snip/

I missed this guy's launching... did you see it, Jim?
Also, I did not get any photos of his jib or spin deployed, did you?

That unique, very heavily moded, AI was very interesting... he said the "aerodynamic" shell that he created (from carbon fiber) only weighed 6 or 7 pounds and it covered from the top of the bow, where it structurally attached a bowsprit for the jib and spin, down the bow and across the entire length of the bottom to the stern where he attempted to create a planning surface and also about halfway up the sides, bow to stern! Pretty amazing. He claimed better surfing and was hoping for better planing but was not yet sure on this.
Photo of from bow:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/g7jfuhj5qpxaszg/P3046601_20160304_142155.JPG?dl=0


Photo at Stern (showing more of the following mentioned steering mechanism but also a bit of the white planning surface viewable below it):
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ocvdvhqq7xpb535/P3046596_20160304_141858.JPG?dl=0


He also had an alternative steering mechanism that was really nice, completely foregoing Hobie's stock setup. He claimed at least a 5 or 6 times advantage compared the stock steering in "gear ratio". There were 4 separate steering positions,in the cockpit either side or out on either tramp... very well done!
Photo above showed the large "partial pulley" like attachment to the rudder that the main steering lines were attached to. These lines went through a couple blocks on either side of a very small "traveler" mechanism mounted on the Aka brace behind the seat. Separate lines pulled the traveler car from side to side from either the tramp or from the cockpit (via yet more blocks!).
Some more photos of the steering mechanism ( consisting of many blocks and lines):
https://www.dropbox.com/s/vtg82wnsfzz4nne/P3046597_20160304_141902.JPG?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/iy1wmgse20c47tk/P3046599_20160304_141910.JPG?dl=0


Looks quite complicated but it did work very very nice!

Don
P.S. Apparently Drop Box images do not display well on the Hobie site but the links should work...

_________________
Don Haynes
Aka TriBlue

2005 Outback Red
2011 Adventure Blue converted to an Island
2015 Tandem Island Red

E-mail: [email protected]

Don, I didn't get any pics with his jib and spinnaker deployed and wasn't able to witness his departure unfortunately.

But what a setup !! I spoke with him and his wife for about a half hour last night but didn't realize he had alternative steering too. They said that they've modified their setup about a dozen times and keep tweaking it. He has pullies and bungies that keep the jib/spinnaker lines away from the front of the mainsail while furling. You can kind of see it in one of the following images. I feel sorry for him when he needs to get under one of the bridges and has to demast. It's a bit too complicated for me but I appreciate all the hard work and thought they put into his setup. Quite impressive.

Holy crap! Now THAT is a modded AI! I would love more detailed information on
* The carbon "overshoe"
* The steering system
* The masthead arrangements handling all the stays allowing for mainsail furling

Heck, I want to see everything!

_________________
Tony Stott
2012 Tandem Island "SIC EM" with Hobie spinnaker

Oh yeah, the other genius modification Island Mutant did was the solar cover over the front hatch. IT KEEPS WATER OUT OF THE HULL !!!!! and charges his electronics. And the beauty of it is you can access the front hatch like you normally do. Genius.

And another thing he did that I forgot to mention is he made an internal bulkhead that completely seals off the front of the boat from the back (kind of like what dogslife did quite a few years ago). Just in case he does get water in the boat.

I plan on making a cover to go over my front hatch similar to his. He told me that his doesn't completely hug the front hatch contours like he wanted.

Island Mutant was the first AI in to check point 1 and 11th overall out some very fast boats and out of at least 100 boats total!
I guess his mods are working fairly well!
Will be interesting to see how well his progress continues as the weather and wind changes in the next few days...

_________________
Don Haynes
Aka TriBlue

2005 Outback Red
2011 Adventure Blue converted to an Island
2015 Tandem Island Red

E-mail: [email protected]

https://www.facebook.com/tom.ray.42/med ... 112&type=3

Pics taken in Passage Key Inlet and Anna Maria Sound yesterday.

A yellow TI in one of the pics beached on Anna Maria for unknown reasons. The gray TI beached not far away for obvious reasons...

Island Mutant's rig is very interesting, now I regret forgetting to go up and check out all the boats friday afternoon.
I love the way he solved attaching the shoe to the hull by starting out with a cloth layer, taping that down then build up the shoe around that (brilliant). Making the shoe the full length of the boat solves the sealing problem I had with the joint in the front of my stern cap where it meets the hull. I thought about doing a full shoe but never figured out how to work my way around the mirage drive openings so I just settled for a partial shoe over just the stern (now I regret not thinking it thru more (lol).
I love his bowsprit, he has successfully re-enforced the bow elegantly without having to add all the ugly aluminum bracing I have in mine.
I wish I had seen his sails and wonder what kind of sail area he is ably to fly (mine is up to 260 sq ft, but I seldom use my big spinnaker these days (still nice to have though). Hopefully he is using a furlable code zero on the front (similar to what is on WETA's), which would be way more versatile than the stupid G2 spin I'm currently running. (The code zero can double as a genoa, the G2 can't).
The only other thing I'm perplexed with is how he is able to fly that much sail without widening his stance (extending the AKA's to 12 ft wide vs the current 10 ft wide), if you don't do that with bigger sails it's too easy to capsize the boat (the AMA flotation was only designed around the stock 90 sq ft of sail area, widening the boat a couple feet increases that by a couple three hundred lbs (the AMA's still fold without issues and steering isn't effected at all).
His steering setup is way cool though (love it).
This guy has turned his AI into a really fine sail boat. If his mast topper/halyard setup is anything like mine it's not much more work to raise and lower the mast on the water so you can still go under bridges easily (I do it all the time), with mine I just unclip a couple clips leaving all the lines attached and can lift the mast out easily and lay the whole works down with everything still attached. Actually thats what I do when I break the boat down at the end of the day (I leave everything attached and just lay it all across the hull for transportation on the trailer, adds maybe five minutes to setup/takedown.

I think there was another TI entered in class 6 experimental electric with a Torqeedo 1003 and bunches of solar panels, (basically the same setup I wanted to use, but I never got past the energy consumption issues, it would have been nice to talk to him.
Oh well it's fun to play with this stuff, I'm just imagining here, but I suspect Island Mutant's boat smoked all the rest of the AI/TI's out there (big time).
FE

Has anyone heard what happened to this one? They beached on Anna Maria.

Just wondering how their boat came to be full of water.

I camped with Tom (Class 6 TI) in February in the everglades and he had a pretty slick setup with a lot of electronics. He said that he can run his motor all day with the solar panels without losing battery power. He also said that they were primarily for no wind situations or low wind. At a certain point the motor causes more drag than what the wind can provide. His hakas had little feet on them that turned into a tent platform which levels the tent and gets you off the ground. I was also envious of his lowrance with the big readable display and depth finder.

My wife and I walked the beach late Friday afternoon talking with the participants and looking at all the boats and modifications. We noticed one boat that had the rear plug out and both ama plugs out and we both thought "how odd" someone would do that. Made absolutely no sense to me why you would leave those open unless you were actively draining water. But of course I wasn't one to tamper with anyone's boat and put the plugs in and the owners were not around to notify. Just one possibility how a TI could get that full of water !! Looking at the tracker, it appears they dropped out.

I think they had a leak (sick joke!)

I think there were more real serious and real meaningful mods to Islands this year than any other year. Wow!

Keith

_________________
2015 AI 2, 2014 Tandem

"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex ... It takes a touch of genius and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction." A. Einstein

"Less is more" Anon

Interestingly, the only reacher sail that I saw this year was in Jim Czarnowski's boat. There may have been more, but I did not see them. Last year, there were 3-4.

Keith

_________________
2015 AI 2, 2014 Tandem

"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex ... It takes a touch of genius and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction." A. Einstein

"Less is more" Anon