Interesting thoughts on the safety lines. We have actually ran into a bunch of crap with our adventure boats, sometimes at excessive speeds, ( ie... sand and oyster bars, coral heads, several mooring balls, channel markers, and a couple million dollar boats, oops). And have had many rough surf launches/ landings that go very bad. In any rough seas or boat wakes, the nylon pins break from just water force, we have broke hundreds of those pins. The breakaway nylon sheer pins in Hobies design are not a bad design, (actually clever). However the location of the brace system could not have been located in a worse location, as a designer, I would have told them, you can put the break away brace anywhere but here..., they selected here. Hobie is not flexible about their designs so we have to live with what we have. Everytime I have mentioned it, I get slammed relentlessly by pretty much everyone defending their stupid design, (8 yrs now and counting). I doubt very much Hobie will ever change their design so it's up to users to come up with their own fixes, (not cool). The best work around is to keep the original (or slightly stronger plastic) plastic sheer pin system in tact, to prevent the rear aka bar from elbowing. But unfortunately when the sheer pin breaks and the ama folds in, the boat capsizes, (keiths insta capsize). The root cause of the problem is the location of the brace, any force applied to the ama is tripled at the brace, (because of leverage). The sheer pin is designed to break at a certain force, unfortunatly the force required to fold the aka bar, (elbow), or break the ball off the hull, or split the plasic hull is only slightly higher than the nylon sheer bolt break strength,,,, because of the braces mounting location, nothing else. The only purpose for the safety lines is in the event of a sheer pin break, the safety line prevents the ama from folding in completely. So you can stop and make repairs without going over, or doing further damage. Any light rope will do the job, (we use 3/16 or 1/4" dia cheap nylon rope). You shouldn't need a bungy. What makes the system work is the location of the attachment points, not neccessarily the type of rope. Basically anything attached to any rigid point on the hull, and the other end attached directly to the ama, or the outermost areas of the aka bars removes the 3x amplified force. In the event of a serious crash, or roll over in the surf, you want the aka nylon sheer bolt to break, and you want the safey rope to snap and allow the ama to fold in at the knuckles, ( the knuckles are very strong).
The other weakness in the design is the plastic clips that hold the aka bars in, ours have fell out many many times, (just like the OP's first video at around 2 minutes in). Add any rope or clip you like to prevent the aka bars from popping out, (we use kayakbob's simple spectra loops, (costs about a buck)), so if the clip comes loose, and the aka bar starts to come out, the safety line prevent the aka bar from falling all the way out. Again Hobie is very inflexible about their original design, (feeling it's the greatest thing since sliced bread), well it's not, so the rest of us are forced to come up with our own work arounds, again I'll get slammed relentlessly by people defending a stupid design. It is what it is. FE
Edit: other than those couple minor annoying issues, the boats are pretty darn remarkable, better than anything else out there I know of. What I like most as a long time kayaker is the ability to use either as a kayak or a sailboat, depending on the day, it's not the best at either but gets the job done very well. There is no day you can't take an adventure boat out, (within reason of course).
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