tonystott wrote:
Sounds non-credible to me. I could certainly imagine Miragedrive fins failing due to excessive speed, if placed underneath a boat doing 50 mph!
Case Closed, then... and my guess would be that the reports I have read were on older versions of the Mirage Drive.
Quote:
Heck, I even noticed from your recent photos that you seem to have replaced ALL the running rigging on your AI... surely Hobie's choice of line was not so bad as needing replacement from the get-go? Just sayin'
I would say it was every bit so bad. ..... And I would also grade the quality of workmanship and materials in Hobie's sail as C- or D+ .... but that's a whole other thing.....
Granted that's just me... but I found the 2:1 1/4" mainsheet running through the supplied X-bar cleat unusable in winds of high-teens and above.... and in higher winds the inability to un-cleat in gusts seemed flat-out dangerous.
My setup: 3:1, 5/16ths, cleat moved back on to the boat's rail works like I think the Hobie setup should have worked on Day-1: especially the ability to quickly cleat/uncleat with the flick of a wrist....... Maybe I'm just not man enough to handle 1/4" 2:1 in heavy air.... but 3:1 and 5/16ths does the job for me.... and I have read numerous complaints from others about the inability to quickly un-cleat the stock setup.
Ditto the furling line. .... Dunno what I'm using right now, but it's about twice the width of the stuff Hobie supplied and it *still* sometimes cuts into my hands. ... The Hobie-supplied stuff... geeze, they might as well have supplied fishing line.
I found the halyard on the spinkit way too thin too - although upgrading it was not in the cards because of the narrowness of the path through the mast topper.
And it's not like I have delicate hands - after 30+ years of windsurfing I have a grip like a silverback gorilla and I only stopped having to trim my calluses with a razor blade last year after quitting windsurfing.
I suspect that what I consider "Fun" sailing days on the AI are days when Hobie would say "Don't go out: the boat is not rated for that."
This is what I would call a "Fun" day:
https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipP ... JaRW5TYzBRThis is more like an "Interesting" day:
https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipP ... 5TYzBR..... I made the drive down there, so I went out, but "Fun" might not be the most appropriate word...
That being the case I think it is wise to consider various failure modes and what I am going to do to prevent them and/or deal with them when they happen.
To Wit:
- Aka shear bolt failure without hitting anything - and the resulting capsize if no preventive
measures are in place.
- Mirage Drive chain cable failure after religious rinsing after every use and only about one season's use.
- Aka knuckles unexpectedly coming free of the x-bars. (which I have not experienced, but which
others report.... and which I hopefully will not experience bco the keepers I fitted)
I am clearly not your average "Happy Camper" user.... more like a fault-finding poster boy for buyer's remorse - but part of the AI's charm for me is all the things that one can to to make it work they way one thinks it should.
I think I have a pretty good track record of finding problems with things. ..... Back in the mainframe days we used to test each others code before submitting it for formal testing and I earned the nickname "The Kiss of Death"..... and that tendency/ability/obesssion extends to physical things. .... I think about things that, probably, no normal person thinks about. .... Things like the diameter of the bottom plate on the furling drum: It really should be increased as much as possible to reduce the chances of a loose furling line dropping down below the drum and fouling.
My next target is the cleats for the lines that raise/lower/lock the rudder. ..... Sometimes I can get them to cleat without making it a two-handed operation, but mostly they will not cleat. .... I'm thinking something with shimming the cleat to give it a couple degrees of angle....... This is a convenience issue when sailing with a lot of weed in the water because periodically you want to dump weeds from the rudder by quickly un-cleating the lock-down line, yanking the pull-up line, letting go of it, and then yanking the pull-down/lock line and have it cleat without having to bend over and fiddle with two hands...... all very quickly while still under sail.
Similarly, when sailing into the beach, there's plenty to do what with furling the sail and retracting the daggerboard without the rudder-raising/locking line becoming a two-handed intervention.... Again just a convenience... but those lines really should cleat every time.
FWIW, when I got the AI in the water last fall, I gave it a fun factor of 1 or 2 (Windsurfing being 9-10).... and now I have upgraded it 3-4 and 5
might be in the cards..... maybe.....
Part of the process is acceptance of the AI for what it is and not what I wish it were - and part of it being introducing at least a little bit of "Flow" by surfing the chop and zig-zagging in general.
_________________
2015 AI in "Dune" - "The Grey Pig"
2017 Trailex 450 Trailer
Pre-September 2015 cradles
(anybody want to buy a slightly-used AI SpinKit?)
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