My Hobie PA 14 saved my life

I'll start this by saying I have 14 years of kayak fishing experience and 5 years of salt water kayak fishing.
I just returned from a trip to Florida for 7 days of fishing in my new Hobie PA 14. The first three days were amazing fishing and by the fourth day I was worn out so I skipped a day to recover because I'm old. Day 5- I was ready to go so I took off at 5am. After several hours of catching, I decided to try my luck out in deeper water so off I went, 30 min later, I was at the end of a jetty where I was told there were Bull Reds as well as other large fish. The tide was going out but low tide was 4 hours old so I didn't think much about it and that's when the trouble started. The boating activity started to pick up and the end of the jetty looked like a washing machine 20 min after I started fishing. Even though I was wearing my PFD, I didn't think I needed to stick around so off I went, thinking I had about a 45 min trip back. If you have a paddle kayak you know that your arms can only take so much before you can't paddle any more but with your legs, in my opinion, you can push for much longer and harder. I was monitoring my speed on my depth finder, I was going .85 Mph and my average speed is normally 7.5-8.5 mph so I knew I was in a rip current. An hour later, I was still far from land with two options; keep pumping my now tired legs or try and cross the one mile channel with tons of boating traffic. I tried making large sweeping S turns but nothing was working. Multiple times a large wave would push me closer to the jetty than I wanted to be. The thing that saved me was I was prepared! The PA afforded me to bring extra gear. I had snacks, water which equaled energy! I know if I had been in my old kayak things wouldn't have turned out like they did and after 2.5 hours of constant peddling, l made it back safe and Only worn out. Thank you to my wife for buying my Hobie PA and thank you Hobie for making a Amazing kayak!

Amen brother. Glad you made it & ditto on the value of the Hobie Mirage Drive. Thanks for sharing this story. Many of us can relate. Time to get a motor for backup.

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PA 14; 2012
Cape Fear River - NC

We don't have a PA, but ran into a similar situation with our TI offshore the first time we had our TI out, my wife and I picked up the brand new boat and went offshore (off Sarasota), we couldn't get back in against the 5mph tidal current, and were being swept out to sea. We finally made it back in like 3hrs later exhausted. I ordered an emergency backup outboard that evening, and have never ever gone out offshore in the 5yrs since without an emergency outboard mounted and ready on the boat (and a minimum hundred miles of fuel on board). Even if you never use it, it's there if you need it. Especially here in Florida we can sometimes get sudden storms with no notice (sometimes daily in the summer). Key West is a tiny dot in the ocean, with really strong currents and there have been many occasions where sailing and pedaling to the best of our ability, we were being driven out to sea, without the emergency outboard we would have been toast. More than once we have been caught out offshore with no notice in 35mph winds and 5ft seas, or 2-3 miles from shore with a broken rudder, not fun. We always log where we are going and how long we will be out, with someone who can help if we are overdue, and make sure we have the required safety equipment ( 'including lights', just in case).
Bob