Tidal patterns unfair to mirage pedallers?

In my area I find that the tides follow a 2-week cycle which for me is very convenient; on the first weekend the tide will be high in morning and evening and low at midday; on the second weekend the tide will be low in the morning and evening and high at midday; then the pattern repeats and on the predictions I have seen it never seems to vary much from this pattern.

It means that on any given weekend I can choose to go either 'right' or 'left' from the beach, so to speak: choosing my direction based on which way the tide will be flowing so that I can get a lift 'there' and a lift 'back'...

...ain't nature wonderful

"When life gives you lemons...." you have options -- apparently 2" makes all the difference? If so:

1. Hack a couple of inches off your large rudder so it sticks down no more than standard fins. You won't even notice the difference in performance. This is a no-brainer. All my Hobies have large rudders and all are modified on some way. With a hack saw, file and some imagination you can have a great custom rudder!

2. ST fins are almost as efficient as Turbos (although your pedaling cadence will be higher). OR see below.

"Penguin Man" developed an improved flutter kick when facing hours of shallows pedaling in a recent Everglades Challenge" (300 mile race in Florida). As you know, a flutter kick is an abbreviated kick with one foot forward -- the fins stay within a few inches of the horizontal. This allows Turbo fins to propel the boat in very shallow water, but is slow and tiring when used for extended periods. Jim's ingenious solution -- temporarily adjust one pedal back several positions to re-center the feet with the fins offset and using very short strokes with both feet. Works beautifully!

Enjoy the sweet lemonade!

Trying to help people solve their problems seems to be a huge waste of time. When direct experience doesn't fly in the face of "likely" logic, it's time to get out of the advise business!

Best of luck with your dilemma.

After over a decade with Mirage kayaks, I did not know about the "improved flutter kick". I appreciate the new info.

There is no down side to purchasing a separate large sailing rudder and cutting it down for shallow water. We did this on all of our Hobie kayaks. This was a while back but at that time If I remember correctly I only paid $30 bucks or so for each, and we put them on all three of our Hobies (2 revos and an Oasis). We just removed the original rudder and placed the big rudder on the boat (leaving the original rudder stock). The hacked off big rudder works great in shallows, and gives you the same rudder control as the stock factory rudder. We actually had several to suite conditions, some had 5-6 inches hacked off to go thru mangroves and oyster beds, others were just left alone fo kayak sailing offshore. We used to also do a lot of river kayaking in shallow rivers and rapids, we typically fitted the hacked off rudders on when doing that kind of stuff. In rapids and shallows you are mostly running with the rudder up and mirage drives out or parked anyway, and depending on your most powerful tool (the double ended paddle). Also we had different mirage drives for different needs, we had a stock set with standard fins with some 1/16 x 1" wide aluminum folded and glued over the end of the fins for rapids and fast shallow rivers ( they looked like crap being all beat up, but who cares). We had others setup with the big turbo fins that we used when kayak sailing along with the big (uncut) sailing rudder when kayak sailing offshore. All these boats are very versatile and can be used for many different things.
Hope this helps
Bob

Actually that flutter fin idea could probably be used all the time, just adjust the pedals so the fins flop like a butterfly (vs pedaling thru). There is likely very little loss, I'm definitely going to try that next time out.

Wow, this is a great idea! I was kayaking one of our N. GA rivers this weekend and was flutter kicking a lot in shallow water. I'm going to try this the next time out!