My AI is a behemoth on top of my sedan and RV. Ama drama.. so away with amas, and in with wings! Hobie 17-style. Made from a modified set of Aka's, using custom trampolines, and perhaps a TI sail.

I have not yet done this, but I wanted to gather opinions and pointed criticism before spending time and money.

Some of the mechanical stuff is straightforward, (helm, sheet, and Aka mods, etc...), some isn't, such as loading on the cross-beam/aka mounts, load moment, etc.... I am also super curious about boat handling problems that I may not be considering. E.g. off the wind in 20kts, going to weather in too little wind. I have sailed extremely tippy boats, (RS Aero, Laser) and over a decade of F18 racing, but perhaps I will get out there on the water with my winged AI, and wish I had appealed to the wisdom of crowds... So crowd, what is your wisdom?

Thanks,

Dan
Campbell

Matt is correct, just the weight of the mast with the sail furled tips the boat over, (a TI with no AMA’s).
Just for the fun of it I did rig one of my old TI’s for kayak sailing, (with no AMA’s). And it worked quite well, though I seldom used it that way, (I was more of an open ocean kind of guy in the keys, ( scuba diver)). And needed major sails, and twin outboards on a heavily modified TI rigged for offshore.
Lol we started out as kayak sailers on our revo’s many yrs ago, so I was trying to get back to that with the TI kayak sailer setup, for when we traveled inland, (we travel around the country a lot with our RV).
The TI mainsail turned out to be unsuitable for kayak sailing, (way too much side force and weight aloft, ( too tall).
So I designed and built a 35sq ft wing sail, (around 6” thick and around 4 ft at the bottom, then very narrow at the top, ( around 1 ft), I think it was around 16 ft tall. It was pretty equal powerwise to the main TI sail but with almost no side force, ( you kind of need to understand wing sails well to grasp the concept)
But even with that wing sail, I had to install a 50 lb swinging keel weight, ( height adjustable down to 3 ft). All mounted in the rear mirage drive pocket, and easily removed.
Just for fun one day I put my aka bars in upside down, and attached the tramps, it all worked, but looked silly. Never got around to making the wings, (like you describe), would have been around 2 ft wide tramp material, ( using old cut off aka bars).
Since I only used the thing maybe five times, it ended up just piled up in the garage with my other crazy ideas.
FE

My AI is a behemoth on top of my sedan and RV. Ama drama..

Thanks,

Dan
Campbell

I had the same pain roof topping the old TI’s, actually wrecked my back and had to sell them, ( doctors orders). We had a trailer and used it when we didn’t have the camper along, we also always had to car top when we went to our key west home, because there is no parking in key west.
We now just have small paddle yaks that we can throw in the back of the truck, lol now my back is better I can now swim, and paddle regular yaks, (the reason we bought Hobies in the first place was because of my broken back injury from long ago, ( couldn’t twist my body to paddle, but peddling was fine).

We are going to the Chassahowitzka river in june, never been there, and have no idea even where it is, (wife made the reservation). But I don’t think it the same river as the caloosahatchie river, (lol too many weird river names around here)
FE