I saw a post earlier today on Gizmodo and just shook my head. Personally, I love taking the kayak out and hitting the water, and part of the fun for me is the physical exercise involved with paddling my boat around. It’s fun, and it’s a great workout.
Of course, not everyone feels that way, which is why we now have this solar-powered kayak that uses three solar panels to power a near-silent electric trolling motor, which puts out 36 pounds of thrust to motor your kayak around whatever body of water you decide to drop it in.
The entire unit costs $1100, not including a kayak. It attaches to your existing boat and turns into a catamaran, it would seem. Not sure why you would spend that kind of cash on something like this when you could just have a small fishing boat and accomplish the same thing, but whatever floats your boat. Pun fully intended. 😉
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That does seem to take some fun out of it. Also I would think you could do much more then sputter around a lake…not much going on with whitewater on that thing.
Yeah, I’d hate to see what would happen if you hit some Class V water with that thing. You’d probably watch your $1100 contraption go down the river in pieces. 🙂
I studied using solar for my kayak using exactly one of those engines. The power that you can get from the three solar panels does not cover even 1/3 of the electricity that motor uses going at full speed.
That means you just get a longer ride but you still need to charge the battery when you get home at night.
Your blog keeps getting better and better! Your older articles are not as good as newer ones you have a lot more creativity and originality now keep it up!
that's not a catanaran. it essentially turns your kayak into an outrigger canoe which the polynesians used to travel to Hawaii, micronesia, phillipines, new zealand, and Madagascar, trolling motors are more for fisherman, who want to be able to silently troll their boats through the water. if you know fisherman, they're pretty lazy, so it makes sense that they'd want something like this, outrigger provides an additional ability to stand and fish from your kayak giving it better balance on the ocean