Trips on the Adventure Island and Native Slayer Propel 13

Life has been busy for me in a lot of ways between hurt dogs requiring constant care for months and costing me $4k over the last 2 months, and before that working crazy hours for 3-4 months and all of sudden most of the year has gone by with me hardly fishing at all.

It's unfortunate, but I know some years will be like that. Next year will be better!

Recently I had a friend visit, and we wanted to spend some time on the water. Thanks to bmb 2.0's generosity, he allowed me to borrow his Adventure Island, Slayer Propel 13 and the trailer for a couple weeks. Right on!

I took it out to Lake Del Valle because it was familiar, large-ish, and local. The wind forecast for the days I took it out were lackluster, so I never got to experience the full use of the AI. My first impression was how much I love the stability of it. I'm a big guy and I could stand up on it easily. That's nuts to me! It's not a surprise but knowing and experiencing was different.

It was my first time using any hobie, or pedal yak of some sort. So that was new too. It was awesome feeling how much power was in the mirage drive. Once it got going, it was super easy to keep a good pace at a relaxed pedaling pace. I zipped around in no time even with the AI fully rigged! I got soaked immediately too haha. Not a big deal just not something I often deal with in my Trident or especially my Predator.

Next, was setting up the sail.  As I said I never really got up to decent speeds in it, but I did have some brief windows where I could see it go faster than pedal speeds. I would love to try it in the ocean on a windy day. It was so fun!

We switched around and my friend hopped on the AI while I used the Propel. It was imediately a different experience. I don't know how it is for hearing people, but the big negative to me was what pedaling felt like. I could really feel things whirrrrring and since I'm ultra-sensitive in my sense of feel, it kind of grated on my nerves. Other than that, it was really cool being able to go forward and backwards easily. in a big open area, it did not matter so much but I decided to explore a cubby and immediately appreciated being able to reverse through tricky spots and back out of areas instead of having to turn th ekayak around or paddle out.

After we were done playing around, we headed to launch around 3pm. Upon arrival we disconnected the ama's, and sail so that I could operate it like an Adventure. I had heard it was the fastest version of kayaks, so I had to try it out. I was not disappointed. some people paddling bugged their eyes out as I sped past them. A boat in a no wake area was confused when I was going faster than him, ha. But it was exhausting to paddle that hard and fast, so I only did it for a short burst. It seems to reach good speed with easy pedaling, and trying to pedal harder makes me go faster but the gain is minimal for the effort spent.

I will likely buy an AI someday. I am glad I got to try it out and see them for myself. Thanks again bmb 2.0!!

The pull of The Dark Side!

Thanks for the writeup---it's good to have a side-by-side comparison of the Hobie and Native.

I've got a 2013 Adventure (no Island, yet...), and I always tell people just what you wrote: it can be really fast over short bursts, but the big advantage is that I can maintain a decent pace all day (and, of course, having hands free is huge too).

Btw, your posts are sorely missed this year!

I miss being able to post reports!! Hopefully this will change next year!

I miss being able to post reports!! Hopefully this will change next year!

I'm waiting for another SC thresher shark report...