We saw a flying boat (wasn't a TI, but it could have been)

Here is an interesting twist, we were hanging out at the local sand bar and a flying boat flew over us and landed near us, coolest thing ever).
Of course I didn't have my camera ready at the time, but I did catch some crappy video a little later (about midway thru the video).
The boat was a catamaran with twin flotation hulls, under a parasail (like a hang glider), the push prop engine sounded pretty powerful (I would think it needs to be to get a dang boat in the air).

Seeing this got me thinking, everything I saw could have just as easily been added to a Tandem Island hull, don't know if I could ever get it off the water though (lol), but it would sure be fun trying. Has anyone done this with their TI....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gk2-5Upi_Dk



The temps outside were in the high 80's with almost no wind, there were no other sail boats out at all besides one other Tandem Island I saw bumming around near city Island I spotted while setting up, (not going very far in 3 mph winds).
Since I make my own wind, it's no problem on these light days for me.

I launched from City Island into a light headwind and made my way to big pass (about 6-7 miles) where my family and friends met me with the powerboat (nine of us). Since my best point of sail is upwind I averaged around 10 mph with my motors at higher throttle than I normally set them, but I wanted to get there. We hung around at the brand new sand bar (just developed last week during the last storm), I think all the sand is from what used to be Siesta Key beach (the #1 beach in the USA), most of which was blown away in the tropical storm (now it just a sliver, used to be 1/2 mile wide).

We had a blast, I took everyone out sailing, with as many as 5 on the boat at time (we were severely overloaded, and the bow was running under water, but everyone still had fun. Some were from up north and never sailed before, no they can say they sailed in the ocean (lol), We went a few hundred yards into the open gulf, then turned around and came back.
On the way back to city Island (where I launched from), it was a downwind, then a broad reach (worst point of sail on my boat as seen in the video), so it took me a while longer to get back.
All in all a typical fun JAPDIP day (just another perfect day in paradise), what we do most weekends...
FE

Thanks for the vid. Just an interesting observation, given that hifh speed, your fins will actually be slowing you down when you pedal at that rate. This of course is of no consequence, as you are pedalling for fitness, so it doesn't matter which side of the fins provides resistance.

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

I usually pedal at a little higher rate with deeper strokes when I'm not trying to shoot video. A concentration issue.

With my old fins which were totally worn out, they would flutter and vibrate at speeds over 12 mph and I would have to pull my drives to prevent damage. With these new fins (with the glide drives) fit fairly tight (the adjusting screws are turned in a bit more that I used to set them at). I still feel good resistance on the pedals when peddling. I think pedaling gets me better gas mileage. With the high pitch props the motors cannot generate enough horsepower to get the engines up to full rpm when the engines have to provide all the propulsion, I'm ok with that since I'm getting some hp from peddling (admittedly not a lot), The rest of my HP requirements come from the wing and apparent wind generated energy.
In nice wind 7-10 mph with my forward motion of around 8-10 mph plus the 7-10 mph natural wind that I'm re-directing over the wing and main makes the airflow over the wing and main nearly equal to 18 to 20 mph winds passing over the mainsail. When everything is humming along properly the boat speeds up and the engine rpm's increase as the wing takes it's share of the propulsion load, so I don't need more engine hp, what I have is sufficient for my needs. I do however need to design and build a new wing soon, this current one is totally worn out (after 3 yrs of really heavy use) and not nearly as efficient as it used to be. I have a more efficient design in mind that I am itching to try out.
FE

Here is a pic of us at the brand new sand bar (the sand lost from Siesta key beach which is now in big pass (lol)). Notice that I removed my hull planing mod that gives me about a hundred extra lbs of flotation in preparation for our upcoming trip to Georgia on vacation this week (car topping the TI). We had 5 people on the boat (around 750 plus lbs), she was sitting pretty low in the water, but still handled and sailed nicely. Obviously I wouldn't take it out in rough conditions that way, but the winds were only maybe 5 mph, and the sea was really flat. Everyone had fun. This is pretty much what it typically looks like when we go just off shore down at our Key West place to go snorkeling (always too many people). Obviously we spend way more time in the water than in the boat (lol).


Notice my fancy fancy automatic anchor system is gone, that was destroyed last week when we got hung up on a rock while diving (a few miles from this spot at point of rocks).