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PostPosted: Fri Apr 11, 2014 11:13 am 
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Hello all,

I have a family of four, Mom Dad, 4yr old and 7yr old. I am debating between the following:

1. (1) Tandem Island

or

2. (2) Oasis

I have been looking on this forum for a long time trying to make the right choice and not have buyers remorse. I almost keep pulling the trigger on the TI but then I think, would it be more fun as a family to have (2) Oasis so that all of us have a seat and we can explore different paths while on the water?

Which would you choose and why?

Thanks,
Brandon


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PostPosted: Sun Apr 13, 2014 6:36 pm 
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Location: Valle Vista, CA (SoCal)
Are you over thinking? I know when I over think something, I start ignoring my gut feeling (instinct). I have found instinct to be a combination of thought and feelings. Your instinct is your best guide.

That being said, I have an Oasis. Our adult daughter is on her own, so when buying a kayak, I had these things to factor.
-needed to have room for me, my wife, and our small dog
-my wife and I are avid bicyclist
-almost all of our vacations are in our travel trailer
-I would transport my boat on the top of my truck shell

We looked at and tried all sorts of kayaks, but when we went for a test drive in an Oasis, instinctively, we knew that was the boat for us as soon as we left the dock.

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Valle Vista, CA


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PostPosted: Mon Apr 14, 2014 5:35 am 
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Joined: Fri Jun 06, 2008 1:53 pm
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Location: S.E. Florida
Just some food for thought:

It always sucks to be on shore watching someone else have fun when you want to be out there too.

1. Highest price option both TI and Oasis bearing in mind the TI can be used as tandem kayak as well on those calm days you all want to tour about. A sail is great but there are places to kayak and a sail is not the best option. Four people and only two seats someone stays behind.

2. Two Oasis kayaks with sail kits. If sailing is what you want to do you can sail the Oasis too. An Oasis with a sail kit will not keep up with a TI.

Sailing an Oasis definitely is not the equivalent of a TI but still fun. I sail my revolution and it is a blast.

My only advice is don't buy to go less expensive if it is not want you really want. You will have buyers remorse. Wait a little longer save the pennies and get what you want.

I personally love versatility. That is why I chose the revolution for myself pedal, paddle or sail.

Good Luck on your decision and hope to welcome you to the Hobie Kayak Klan soon. Keep the forum posted. Whatever you decide will be an adventure.

Revo

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A Thrill Ride is being dragged around in your kayak for 40 minutes by an extremely large fish.


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PostPosted: Mon Apr 14, 2014 9:58 am 
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Go with the Oasis X 2.

That way each child will have an adult and all 4 of you can be on the water at the same time.

Our adult sons were put in swimming classes at the age of 4 to 5, and they became what we call drown proof somewhere around age 8-10. Our challenge to every swim instructor was to throw them into the water and have them swim back and flip them off a float during each lesson. This eliminated fear of the water, and we taught them to respect the water when on/in it and on the shore.

Now, even if your kids can't pedal a Mirage unit, they can become ballast for the parent in the back of an Oasis.

I wish that the Oasis Mirage had been around 40 years ago.

PS: After viewing this you tube from a member, I would recommend adding the AMA's to your Oasis X2.

http://youtu.be/NVRbX3T2NQA

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2012 Freedom Hawk Pathfinder


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PostPosted: Mon Apr 14, 2014 1:29 pm 
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Location: S.E. Florida
Grampa Spey wrote:
Go with the Oasis X 2.

PS: After viewing this you tube from a member, I would recommend adding the AMA's to your Oasis X2.



I second that Grampa Spey I should have added that in my food for thought. I was the dune colored revolution 13 with the blue sail and sidekick amas in that video. It was a blustery day and the amas were needed. The high setting let me zip along with no apprehensions of a capsize. I recommend them highly especially if you sail with young ones on board.

Revo

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I would rather be kayaking and think about work than to be at work thinking about kayaking.
A Thrill Ride is being dragged around in your kayak for 40 minutes by an extremely large fish.


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PostPosted: Mon Apr 14, 2014 5:49 pm 
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Joined: Sun Aug 12, 2007 5:17 pm
Posts: 679
Location: Auckland NZ
Oasis x 2 - the best thing about my recent acquisition of an Oasis is that now the whole family can go adventuring together. And you can solo it easily either from the front cockpit (and you can change seats when out at sea) or from the rear cockpit with ballast in the front (water or sand in containers seems to work well).

If you want to improve the sailing performance of the Oasis you can make a DIY mod to add another mast base in the bow. (NOTE TO MATT MILLER - THIS IS SUCH A GOOD MOD THAT IT SHOULD BE AVAILABLE AS STANDARD ON THE OASIS AND IF YOU CAN ADD A COUPLE OF DAGGERBOARD SLOTS AT THE SAME TIME THEY WOULD RALLY IMPROVE UPWIND PERFORMANCE). The mod is not hard to make and it really makes the boat sail superbly well - I was out in my friend's Oasis schooner at the WE and it was superb - I can't wait to make the modification on my own boat.

Basically the TI will be faster but it will also be a whole lot more uncomfortable (huge amounts of spray over the crew) , it is bigger and more difficult to transport and store, requires more set up time, only serves half the family and I doubt it will prove to be more fun for everyone.

I also do not think you will find a more versatile boat in the Hobie fleet than the Oasis (i have had Outback, outfitter, several adventures and still have an AI - which I do not use because I prefer to use the Adventure hull on its own as a kayak).

Whatever you decide, though, enjoy - these are GRRRREAT boats!!


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PostPosted: Mon Apr 14, 2014 6:59 pm 
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Location: Sarasota,Key West FL
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We have owned both the Oasis and Tandem island models, they are both nice boats and you can't go wrong with either.
A lot also depends on where you live also, if you live near the ocean and plan to go offshore on in the intercoastal system, you will find out quickly that these bodies of water are huge.
Let me go into how we got into kayaking and the choices we made, this may help. When we finally moved back to Florida for good and sold all our other houses, we had already sold our Sea Ray 24 ft boat a few yrs before. We always loved the water but no longer owned a boat so we decided to take up kayaking. Our first few times out were in rental paddle kayaks where we were only comfortable a few hundred feet from inland shore (on the intercoastal in Florida), we would venture at best a mile or two from launch, then after an hour or so we were usually tired and would return. We then went to a local Hobie Dealer Demo days event where they let us try out 5 or 6 different models of kayaks (all brands), they were very knowledgeable and tried to guide is in a direction that would best suit us and answered all of our stupid beginner questions.
We ended up buying a revolution for my wife and an Oasis for me. We have 6 kids (all grown up now) and 6 grand kids who come down from Illinois often (to get out of the snow) so we wanted a two seater that can handle two people easily yet still usable as a single, the Oasis was perfect, but when solo the Revo was way faster (Revo's are very fast kayaks), and my wife would literally drive circles around me taunting me to keep up (true story). We probably put a couple hundred thousand road miles on our car with kayaks on the roof and camper in tow traveling around the country dropping in any body of water we could fit the boats into (including class II rapids in Colorado). We had the optional sail kits mounted on the boats and never went out without the sail kits strapped to the side of the boats, just in case we got a chance to sail. After a while we could go 10-15 even 20 miles with little effort pedaling 10 hrs, then get up the next day and do it all over again. That's way further and way less work than we ever imagined when we were renting paddle kayak, didn't even know it was possible.
In 2010 when the Tandem Island came out we traded in our Oasis for the new Tandem island, and continued on our merry way doing exactly the same stuff we were doing before. I always load the kayak onto the car all by myself sometimes 5-6 times a week. Yes the TI is a big boat, but the Oasis is also large, personally I prefer to load a TI on my roof over our old Oasis any day. It's about 3 ft longer, this in my opinion makes it easier to lift only one end (you only are ever lifting around 50 lbs on the TI or 45 lbs with the Oasis, I honestly cannot tell the difference.
One reason we got rid of the Oasis was it had really limited cargo space, we are divers and campers, and always have a lot of gear on our sometimes very long excursions, there is no comparison as far as storage space goes, the TI has way more. Also the TI is by far the fastest boat in Hobies fleet, even solo in kayak mode I could easily smoke my wife and would constantly drive circles around her taunting her to keep up, well until I tried to do it on a very narrow river and got sideways right in front of her and ran into the bank and we both went over (I'll never live that one down). We were out last weekend at a Hobie Island club get together and one of the guys had his whole family on a TI, he had one of his kids I would guess around 6-8 that just rode on the huge rear deck behind the rear seat, she actually looked pretty comfortable back there. We have had 3 adult on our TI in kayak mode and as many as 4 adults and two children on our TI (in TI mode with the sail, AMA's and trampolines) out in the gulf on nice calm days to go out snorkeling and having fun down in the keys. Actually we are out on it ever single weekend all year round. We are leaving for our other house in Key West in the morning for a week or so, and I plan to go out ever single day if possible. We will be going out with 5 or 6 people probably every day. We have an inflatable 6 person boat that we just blow up and tow behind the TI, we store all of our coolers, scuba tanks, swim gear, etc in the towed boat about 20 ft behind the TI (you can't even tell it is back there), we also have several cheap inflatable single person kayaks, that people just grab onto the sides of the towed raft and we pull the whole group on our 'party barge' off shore somewhere or at a local island or sand bar and just have fun snorkeling and cooking out.
The TI in my opinion is the ultimate family boat, here is one of my favorite TI videos of all time.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb4orK9MLXE[/youtube]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb4orK9MLXE

I'm not trying to influence you one way or another, either choice is a good choice is good, as they are both great boats, but Hobie literally invented a whole new category of family boats with the TI, you can do more with a TI than any other boat on the market today, it's truly the family SUV of the boating world, and in a class all by itself. You can literally use it for anything you can imagine.
I definitely would demo both boats and talk to the dealer at length.


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PostPosted: Tue Apr 15, 2014 8:55 pm 
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Location: Valle Vista, CA (SoCal)
Stobbo,
Your mention of an "Oasis Schooner" has my mind going. I would like more information...PLEASE! A picture. A video. I'd even appreciate a sketch.

Longbikermike
sent by iPad using TapaTalk

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Valle Vista, CA


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PostPosted: Wed Apr 16, 2014 2:15 am 
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Joined: Sun Aug 12, 2007 5:17 pm
Posts: 679
Location: Auckland NZ
Mike. If you search around on the forums (might be on the kayak sailing forum) you should find some extensive posts about the Oasis schooner mod with photos.

This mod was made to the mark 1 Oasis (the one with the round hatch in the front wall of the forward cockpit) and the forward mast base was mounted on a wire frame cunningly made up to bolt onto the boat using the screw holes for that forward hatch flange - which meant that the hatch would still open for stowage. I think that this implementation was very cunningly conceived and very low impact (no holes in your boat).

Unfortunately with the latest Oasis the front hatch is now a lift up toilet seat affair and the front wall of the forward cockpit has no rigidity in a fore and aft direction which is not ideal, plus there are now no convenient screw holes for mounting the mast base. So the only option on the new model appears to be to drill a hole in the hull forward of the toilet seat hatch into which to drop the mast base and then to find some way of supporting it inside the boat so that the mast stays upright. I have not looked inside my friend's boat to see exactly what he has done but that is the basic principle that has been applied.

To put the mast into the base is a bit of a stretch for the forward crewman and the bungee attachment point is one of the bungee knobs for the hatch lid bungee which is OK but not much more than that... but the setup does work and work well.

The sailing performance is transformed and even with 2 biggish blokes in the boat jogged along superbly well with next to no waves coming over the gunwales in slightly overpowered wind strength.

As I have mentioned upwind performance is not the boat's strongpoint - it really needs a daggerboard or two (and Hobie's folding ones would be ideal so that the daggerboards could be trimmed e.g. For getting the bow down in a tack) but I reckon it manages quite a bit more than a close reach (based on one outing only in a strong tide). As to a reach or broad reach - excellent! Transformed!!

The other thing is that with the two sails you really can start tinkering with sail balance fore and aft - you can feel the effect of every centimetre of trim on the boat - and one person can do it all from the rear cockpit - a few tied on blocks and maybe a clamcleat or two to lock the sheets off and you would really be able to enjoy the sailing and trimming.

I am already planning my modification and will be looking at my friend's mod closely over Easter. I am also going to have a look at the possibility of staying the masts with forestay and 2 lateral/backstays for the foremast, a triatic between the mast tops and 2 lateral/backstays for the aft mast. I have used stays on the mast on my Adventure and they work really well because there is then next to no bend in the mast and the resulting improvement in sail shape makes a huge difference to sailing performance, especially upwind when the mast(s) suffers the greatest lateral loading/bend.

If I can work out how to post photos I will do so after Easter.

Hope this helps.


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PostPosted: Wed Apr 16, 2014 9:53 am 
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Location: Valle Vista, CA (SoCal)
Stobbo,
Thanks brotha. Big time help!

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Valle Vista, CA


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PostPosted: Wed Apr 16, 2014 11:21 am 
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Location: Escondido
Stringy built a brilliant "twin sail" adaptation for his earlier model Oasis and I'm guessing stobbo might be referring to this. Unfortunately most of his well documented how-to pictures have disappeared over the years. Here's what I could find:
viewtopic.php?f=32&t=8346&hilit=twin+sails&start=15
viewtopic.php?f=32&t=8454&p=43268&hilit=twin+sails#p43268
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=13061&p=73832&hilit=twin+sails#p73832

Here's some detail on the mast step on the front bulkhead of the forward cockpit as can be seen here:
viewtopic.php?f=32&t=8346&p=89767&hilit=twin+sails#p89767
IMO, this could be duplicated with the current Oasis and augmented with an internal brace behind the front bulkhead.

If you have the talent (or a talented friend) and a little imagination, you can have your own twin sail!

Of course, a forward sail would require a second daggerboard. Stringy (who incidentally is our official forum inventor) handled the daggerboard issue like this:
viewtopic.php?f=32&t=50153&p=227579&hilit=two+sails+oasis#p227579

If you try it, be sure and keep us up to date! 8)


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PostPosted: Thu Apr 17, 2014 4:54 am 
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Location: Sarasota,Key West FL
Brandon:
As I'm sure you are seeing you can rig any of these Hobies anyway you like to do pretty much anything you want to do.
Here is a pic of our old Oasis, this pic was taken in around 2008 I think, which was before the Tandem Island ever came out (came out in spring 2010).
Image
Instead of the sidekick AMA's we opted to use a weighted keel on our boats, which makes them pretty much impossible to tip over, even if it gets a little rough out, either solution works if you plan to go out in open water.

One thing that I thought about that might make a difference to you is when we first started kayaking my wife insisted she always wanted her own boat, after we started going on longer, then longer yet excursions (sometimes multi-day), she really started to lean toward just taking one boat and sailing tandem. This way one person can rest while the other pedals for a while, which helps tremendously. With either the TI or the oasis, you only need one person pedaling to make headway, and with two mirage drives we simply take turns pedaling giving each other a break once in a while.
With the TI with tramps and AMA's you can easily have your whole family on board, and just one person pedaling (ie... like up rivers without the sails up, etc) and make better headway than with pretty much any other boat out there. When you get tired, then the wife takes over for a while. That's the way we do it, very seldom do we have two people pedaling at the same time. This can extend your distance by a huge factor since nobody is pedaling constantly. Like I described the TI because of it's long length (longer boats are always faster because of what they call hull displacement), and longer boats always track much better and steer much easier with the fastest kayak type boats being boats like surfski type boats that are very narrow, lightweight, and very long (as long as 24 ft). I'm a very strong peddler, and even I cannot keep up with strong surfski paddler who is experienced and knows what they are doing even with the TI (which is Hobies fastest boat).
One nice thing about owning a TI is typically during the day you get into wider stretches where you might find some wind, so you unfurl the sail and let that do the work for a while, giving your legs a break.
Like I described earlier, it all really depends on where you live, if you don't live near the ocean, and only mostly travel on small lakes and rivers on very small outings, then the TI might not be the best choice.
Transporting the boat or boats is another big factor, we both car top and also have a trailer (the trailer is for when we don't have our camper in tow (taking up the hitch), and have ample space in our garage to store the fully rigged boat in there (basically ready to go at any time, this is all stuff to think about. (especially where to store the boat or boats when not using them, especially if you live in a 40th floor condo in NY city ( LOL))
I found out rigging two complete boats, getting them off the car getting them all setup and ready to go (I do 99% of all the work) takes measurably longer than just pulling a tandem down and rigging just one boat.
All just stuff to think about
Bob
After a while with our TI especially (since it is so efficient on the water) my wife no longer wanted to take her own boat, so our two Revolutions just sat in the garage for a few years unused, until we finally sold them.


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PostPosted: Thu Apr 17, 2014 7:00 am 
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Location: Escondido
Fusioneng is the forum's other official inventor. Hyfrofoils, motor mounts, sails, you name it! Amazing! 8)


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PostPosted: Fri Apr 18, 2014 4:17 pm 
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Location: Central Coast NSW Australia
Amazing all right! 8)
My mods are much more conservative but thanks for the endorsement (and for chasing up all those old topics) Roadrunner!

Just to muddy the waters Brandon, what about a TI and an Oasis? That way you get the best of both worlds. A stripped down TI makes a great tandem kayak that would work well with an Oasis for family kayak trips.
We began with an Oasis but sold it when we got the TI which does all the Oasis did and a lot more.


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PostPosted: Fri Apr 18, 2014 8:52 pm 
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Location: Sarasota,Key West FL
Stringy:
If money were no object having both a TI and an oasis would be a killer combo. You could easily transport 4 adults plus a couple kids plus all camping gear. If the going gets tough, or they want to travel great distances, or they end up in open water the oasis can easily be towed by the TI to the destination, then break off for individual exploring once at the destination. That's what we used to do with our two revo's is tow them behind the TI to the islands across the water. We have towed as many as 4 kayaks before. It actually works better with multiple mirage drive boats, with all the boats pedaling the entire group can move faster. We unfortunately sold our revo's and typically are towing inflatable kayaks and our inflatable now which takes a little more effort. One thing to remember is you can't use kayaks to haul gear like a mule, because the kayaks just tip over, we haven't found any good way to load down a kayak with a lot of gear and go without a human rider. So we typically load the TI and raft with gear, and just tow the extra people on their kayaks out to our dive sight.
I'm not sure I would feel safe on the oasis or revo or our inflatable kayaks if it go a little rough out there. I think restricting that party barge to only mild conditions is a given.
Bob


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