We have owned several revo 13's, it is by a wide margin my fav, very fast and it banks on turns with turbo fins, and is a great kayak sailer with the optional Hobie kayak sail. I hear the revo 16 is even better, but I have never owned one. Unfortunately for us my wife anymore only likes tandem yaks, so we only own tandems now, (all of which are way heavier than any singles), but hey it is what it is.
Our current boat is a TI (really big, and heavy), that we use often in just plain old kayak mode, (leaving the sails, motors, AMA's, etc ) back at our campsite when on inland rivers and such. We often like to explore shallow areas and rocky rivers. On most of Hobies mirage boats you can buy the larger sailing rudder and cut the bottom of the rudder off so it isn't so darn deep in the water, (great for shallow class 2 rapids). Also the mirage drives are way more durable than you may think if used carefully and setup right. When we are using our mirage drives in rock shallows what I do is go to home depot and buy some 1/16" x 1" wide aluminum (comes in 3' strips). I then cut off about a 4-5" piece and fold it over the bottom of the front of the mirage fin. You can use any adhesive shoe type glue (for tennis shoes,like goop) to glue it down, or just do as I do and just wrap it in 3m black electrical tape, (like you would bicycle handlebars). Wrap up the bottom 3" or so of the bottom of the fin with several layers. As it gets cut up it's easily removed and replaced (one roll will last years). What we do in rocky water is as soon as we see it coming we put the bungy on one of the pedals, this is to force the fins up against the hull (where they are safe) when you take your feet off the pedals. You can still pedal like normal even with the bungy on (it just stretches while your peddling). Most rivers have deeper areas and shallow areas, we pedal like normal in the deep areas, and shallow pedal with our double ended paddles in our hands in the shallow areas. The double ended paddle is your friend in shallow and rough waters because you can use it for stability and additional steering control, once you get used to using the paddles you will likely never flip again. What we do in iffy waters is set our mirage drives up to shallow pedal. To do this you set one pedal to say 3 and the other to 6 or 7 and just pedal like normal. This makes the fins flap up and down like a birds wings vs swinging all the way thru an arc. Believe it or not peddling this way is almost as fast as regular peddling but way safer in iffy waters. We still keep the bungy attached to one pedal so when you take your feet off the pedals they fold up harmlessly against the hull. Yea your goin to still bend a mirage post and cut up fins once in a while hitting oyster beds and big rocks, but most of the time they are easily straightened. You shoud see the mirage drive hubs, the fins, and the bottoms of all our Hobies, they all look like they have been thru WWII. These boats are way more durable than you may think. All the mirage parts like fins, posts, hubs, sprockets, cables, etc are what I call consumable and replacable items. We carry spare fins and straightened older rods in our repair kit (usually older used stuff, (not new), looks like crap but still works fine. Hope this helps FE Edit: I suspect that any of the non-mirage Hobie kayaks will track better than any of the mirage kayaks with the mirage drives removed. For those who only paddle and don't intend to ever use the mirage drives, the Hobie non-mirage line of kayaks are very high quality boats, and well made, and should last many years of use. Down here in Florida there are kayaks sitting on the back yard of every other house, most just sitting unused rotting in the sun. Most are brittle after about a year in the sun.
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