TI outboard mount

Great videos Hezi! Good to see some fast sailing and hiking out.
Yes, I agree the outboard is a very worthwhile investment. My wife would agree even more! It has allowed us to do trips that previously were impossible in a day. Either the wind dies and you have a very long pedal or the wind gets up and you battle a headwind all the way back. The outboard guarantees you can return comfortably and in time.
We are using the TI a lot more because of the outboard.
Another advantage is the improved shallow water capability. We recently motored a few kms up a creek that was too shallow for the pedals and rudder. I loosened the steering lock and used the outboard conventionally. Worked great!

PS- where are your haka???

Thanks!

What is haka?

Haka= Hawaiian for perch or shelf as Nohuhu explains here: https://www.hobie.com/au/en/forums/view ... 69&t=37645
Haka was my favourite Island mod, though I think now the outboard has overtaken it for increasing Island versatility.
Haka change the way you sail by making hiking out much easier and give you a drier more comfortable ride than tramps alone. They make soloing the TI easy, especially if cantilevered beyond the rear aka.

Thanks for the explanation sringy. I saw it as a popular mod before but never focused on it. My motor mount and main sheet raiser, while minimally designed, still add 40lb with fuel canister etc. I weigh 230lb... I am very weight conscious, so I never considered it.

Nice video!!!

I just "recovered" from losing the gas cap on my Suzuki 2.5. Just in case this will help anyone.. that gas cap is held captive to the tank internally with a spring and if you pull just a little bit too hard, the spring comes out.. And as I found out, the gas cap does NOT float..

Took a while to find a replacement but I did at boats.net Received the new one, all looks good again. 65510-97J00 CAP ASSY,FUEL T (Suzuki) $21.74

Very useful Walt. I ordered another cap.
On that last trip I had to fuel twice. On both times I drifted quite a distance. The 3rd time the motor died, the sea was high and the water cold. Luckily we just changed heading so we made the rest of the way sailing. It was lots of fun.
Anyway, I want to extend the range of the motor between fueling. I'm thinking to connect a fuel line from a a gas canister to the cap via a tube through the breather. I think the motor will naturally pull fuel through the line (no need for a mechanical pump).
I will experiment and report back if I find a way to make it work.

I just talked to someone last week that has a Suzuki 2.5 on a small sailboat about refueling. This guy simply has some gas line with the bulb hand pump somewhere in the middle that he uses to transfer fuel from a reserve tank to the outboard tank. He also said that you need a shut off valve in that line (important) because no matter where you leave the tube, you have to worry about siphoning. I think he may have left the tube with the pump in both tanks one time without the shut off valve and flow kept running after he stopped pumping.. which was not a good thing if a tank was over flowing..

I somewhat like the setup he has.. I thought about cutting a hole in the outboard gas cap for the tube but then if you rotate the outboard out of the water for sailing. the hole would be a big problem. So.. you probably would have to take the cap off the outboard tank each time and put the tube in, then refill. Like I also do, he just keeps track of time and once an hour tops off the tank by opening the shut off valve (in the pump fuel line), then pumping the bulb to fill up the outboard tank. You of course have to watch how full the tank gets so you dont overflow. Then.. important to close the shut off valve again to make sure no siphoning happens.

Once an hour works well for the Suzuki as it goes for maybe 80 minutes or so at a fairly high throttle setting.

Hezi,
Yeah I thought you must have seen the epic Haka thread. I understand your caution with extra weight but to me the benefits of adding Haka are much greater than any weight penalty. The aluminium frame for haka v3 I made weighed just under 3kg for a 2m long x 30cm wide Haka. With minimal padding the all up weight would be less than 4kg a side. I'm sure your sailing partner would appreciate the easier, drier and way more comfortable hiking out that comes with Haka!

Walt,
Thanks for the heads up re the fuel cap. I'll be very careful when undoing it now!

Re adding fuel I agree with Walt and keep note of the time the outboard has been running. I get around 1 hour 15mins cruising at 10 km/h on 1 tank of fuel.
I carry two 1 litre Trangia plastic fuel bottles which simplify on water refuelling. On longer trips I add a 5 litre plastic fuel can and refill the 1 litre bottles when convenient.
I figured that the complexity of adding an external tank that copes with motor tilting wasn't worth it.
Interested to see what you come up with though Hezi.

I use a similar system stringy; it is so much easier to simply empty a 1 litre container (I bought aluminium ones on eBay) as required, and top them up when not in a seaway.

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

Tony,
Did you get the cheap Chinese alu fuel containers and if so have they been trouble free? I've been a bit disappointed with the Trangia's fine thread on the stopper. It's easy to cross thread if you are not careful.

Given my limited time on the water (I emptied all my 2 stroke mix into the car before going into hospital in late February), it is early days yet, but those aluminium bottles have very coarse threads indeed (almost too coarse!), so I see little chance of cross threading, yet they seem to be leak free. For normal outings, I have about 1.5 litres in the outboard's tank, plus one litre bottle in reserve. Much easier to stow than a big red plastic one.

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

Did this today at Lake Havasu.. We used the outboard sort of like a ski lift to go up the Colorado river from Lake Havasu a ways. Motored about 1.5 hours then shut the motor off and pulled it up. Just before I shut the outboard off, we had a farily strong headwind plus Colorado river current and speed over ground with the outboard was around 4.6 mph. We then sailed a ways farther upwind and up a fairly narrow channel (lots of tacking and pedaling). Found some interesting places in that area then we had a LONG really awesome down wind sail. TI is just a fine vessel doing something like this!!!

So I am playing with that spare cap I got. The idea is to turn the 1 liter fuel range into whatever I wish to have in the auxiliary tank. I am still waiting on some parts but I am going to explore several theories. I hope to keep it simple. I think I will go with a 3 gallon tank just to keep my options opened for future expeditions (If I'm lucky).

For now, I finished the cap. To take it apart, I used some force but after understanding the inner working, you really don't need to. While it screwed on the motor, you can pray it open with a small flat screwdriver while keeping pressure with your fingers from below, up and outward going around till the outer piece pops. from there, it's much simpler. Here are some pictures of the final product. I used aluminum tube, J B weld, a drill and Dremel tool. Maybe by looking at it you will get an idea of where am I going with it, but before I will successfully put it to the test, no points in explaining. First it needs to work...

That would be cool if someone can figure out the external tank thing, to be able to extend the range.

FE

My opinion.. - since I have the Suzuki and use the stock prop and only one outboard.

Remember that to go some speed, you need some horse power. Horse power is RPM times torque. In order to get max HP with a piston engine, you need max explosions per second and that is around 6000 RPM for either the Honda or the Suzuki. And, to get the max HP, the torque must be the maximum the outboard can produce at that peak HP. If you either can not get to 6000 RPM because the the prop pitch has too high of torque or the prop does not produce max torque and the outboard rev limits (the Suzuki will do this, the Honda does not), you also can not get max and rated 2.5 HP.

Back in this thread a ways, I tested the Suzuki stock prop - one outboard and on a TI. The 2.5 HP outboard with the stock prop at wide open throttle got the prop RPM just a little under 6000 RPM. This is just what you want to get maximum HP and maximum speed out of the TI. Peak speed with just one person sitting in the back seat - 7.5 to just under 8 mph.

On the Suzuki, the stock prop is just about what you want. If you were to change this prop to a higher pitch, this is what would happen.

1. The higher pitch prop would produce higher torque at a given RPM so now you would no longer be able to get the wide open throttle RPM up to near 6000 RPM. If you can not get up near 6000 RPM, you can also NOT get up the rated HP out of the outboard. On the Suzuki, this means that if you increase the pitch of the prop over what it is now, you are NOT going to get the same peak speed because you will produce less HP.

2. If you operate the outboard at less than peak HP and peak speed such as 6 mph which is lower than the peak 2.5 hp will achieve, you also do not need to get to peak RPM. So at 6 mph (significantly under peak speed), the higher pitch prop would result in lower RPM and the outboard would likely be less noisy.

3. For either pitch prop, you need to produce some HP to go some speed. The outboard may or may not get slightly better fuel efficiently at lower RPM but the bottom line is that it still needs to produce the same HP to go that speed. So the higher pitch prop might give slightly better fuel efficiency but it just would not be much.

4. For a given HP out of the outboard, since the higher pitch prop result in lower RPM, it must operate at higher torque (remember HP = RPM * torque). So all the components of the outboard have higher torque and higher strain. At some point this is not good for the outboard. However, its likely you really have to increase the pitch a lot before you would have a problem.

My opinioin.. the prop on the Suzukin 2.5 is about perfect for the TI application