What's your pedal kayak cruising speed?

[dickenscpa]

Caveat on the front end, I'm a very avid cyclist who when not in tax season will do 130-150 miles a week on a bicycle and I try to do two centuries a year.

 

With that said I have had a Hobie PA for a year the 30th of this month. LOVE everything about it and wouldn't go back - however a casual pump for me is 3-3.2 mph. I could probably keep that pace straight up for hours without a break and probably not even think about it.

 

Now here's the weird part, if I pump that thing with all I got like I owe someone child support and they're chasing me - it's all I can do to get to 4 mph and that's peak. I'll hover in that 3.8 or 3.9 and might hit a 4.0 peak for a split second.

 

My kayak before this was a Perception Pescador Pilot 12.0. It was a pedal style like a bicycle and I cruised in that thing at 4.2 without even thinking about it. I could get on it a bit and hit 6 mph easy and sustain that if I needed to. I could've went faster than 6 but I don't remember consciously trying and recoding that in my head so I'm not going to lie and make something up.

 

Of course there's a flip side to everything. I had that kayak 8 mos and had the drive warrantied 3 times and had five warranty claims overall.

[schplurg]

I'd imagine it's the same or even worse than a car on land, where when you double your speed the "air force" against you quadruples (inverse square and all that junk)

[Bankc]

8 hours ago, schplurg said:

I'd imagine it's the same or even worse than a car on land, where when you double your speed the "air force" against you quadruples (inverse square and all that junk)

It is.  

 

I once tested out my Minn Kota C2 with a multimeter to see how much power it drew at various speeds.  Every speed up the dial was about double the power draw of the speed below it.  I don't remember the specifics, because I didn't write anything down, but I was getting something like half the kayak speed increase with every step up in motor speed.  It was something like:

 

Speed 1:  0.7mph @ 1.9 amps

Speed 2:  1.5 mph @ 3.8 amps

Speed 3:  2.4 mph @ 7.5 amps

Speed 4:  2.9 mph @ 15 amps

Speed 5:  3.1 mph @ 30 amps

 

That's with the motor set off to the side, so it was slower because it couldn't push my kayak straight.  Since, I'm mounted it on the stern and switched to a PWM controller, so I now get a top speed of about 3.5 mph.  If I paddle as hard as I can along with the trolling motor at full speed, I can get it up slightly over 5mph, but I can't keep that up for long.