Our garage has changed a little.
I said in a recent post that we had gone to Merimbula. The reason for that is now resident in our garage.
These are Hobie pedal kayaks, which we decided to buy to explore bits of the Inlet. '
Some neighbours have bought clones of these which are a LOT cheaper but we decided that we wouldn't trust devices that have been reverse engineered under unknown quality control. I'd hate to be out in the middle of the Inlet and find that the pedal mechanism has reached its use-by date. There are paddles as back up but it would be a major grunt getting back with them.
The purchase process turned out to be quite interesting. There is a Hobie dealer in Merimbula but they hadn't run any demos recently so we spoke to the dealers in Canberra, who invited us to a demo on Lake Burley Griffin. It then turned out they are both part of the same organisation and the guy who demonstrated to us us in Canberra was the one we dealt with in Merimbula. (When his name got mentioned I registered it as "Leif" expecting him to be Nordic. In fact it's Leaf - which is apparently what happens when you have hippies for parents!)
Whatever we got the vessels and their trailer on Saturday and after waiting a couple of days for the wind to drop took them out for a pedal today. It was surprising (although it shouldn't have been after our experiences with the camper) how much farnarkling there was to get them off the trailer and into the water.
Once off and pedalling things went pretty well although the wind had risen to about 20kph making quite a bit of chop on the water. It also meant that getting back inshore with the pedals up was a bit tricky. But overall a success. I felt too nervous to take photos while on the water but there will be plenty of other opportunities for that.
Some neighbours have bought clones of these which are a LOT cheaper but we decided that we wouldn't trust devices that have been reverse engineered under unknown quality control. I'd hate to be out in the middle of the Inlet and find that the pedal mechanism has reached its use-by date. There are paddles as back up but it would be a major grunt getting back with them.
The purchase process turned out to be quite interesting. There is a Hobie dealer in Merimbula but they hadn't run any demos recently so we spoke to the dealers in Canberra, who invited us to a demo on Lake Burley Griffin. It then turned out they are both part of the same organisation and the guy who demonstrated to us us in Canberra was the one we dealt with in Merimbula. (When his name got mentioned I registered it as "Leif" expecting him to be Nordic. In fact it's Leaf - which is apparently what happens when you have hippies for parents!)
Whatever we got the vessels and their trailer on Saturday and after waiting a couple of days for the wind to drop took them out for a pedal today. It was surprising (although it shouldn't have been after our experiences with the camper) how much farnarkling there was to get them off the trailer and into the water.
Once off and pedalling things went pretty well although the wind had risen to about 20kph making quite a bit of chop on the water. It also meant that getting back inshore with the pedals up was a bit tricky. But overall a success. I felt too nervous to take photos while on the water but there will be plenty of other opportunities for that.
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