I’ve been a fan of the Hobie Mirage products since I first learned about them, some years ago. And just for the record, I don’t own or sell any of these products. I just admire the ingenuity of the design, and I’ve enjoyed watching the product line mature.

Anyway, I stopped by Hobie’s display at the Seattle Boat Show today (West 27, near the southeast corner of the main floor). Kevin Cunningham of Hobie Cats Northwest went over some of the newest innovations while I snapped some pictures.

I got to see the Pro-Angler in person.

Check out the big fish well in the bow:

The newest—and easily the most expensive—option for Mirage-drive kayaks is the trés cool Hobie eVolve electric drive, by Torqeedo. Wow!

I saw the newish “Turbo” fins, a bit longer than the standard ones:

…And the slightly redesigned Mirage mounting system, which uses levers instead of the knobs to retain the fin cassette.

Finally, the newest Mirage-drive boat in the stable is the Tandem Adventure Island. Again, wow: This is a whole lotta human- and wind-powered touring boat!

And in case you missed it, we’ve written before about the Hobie Mirage drive here:
Here come the Mirage Hackers!
Hobie Mirage Pro-Angler
Hobie’s Inflatable Mirage-Drive Kayaks
And One Roto-Molded Kayak to Rule Them All: Hobie Adventure Island

While at the Lake Union “Boats Afloat” portion of the Seattle Boat Show just now, I spotted a delightful little stove aboard a delightful, just-launched boat.

The little Sardine stove is fabricated on Orcas Island by Andrew Moore as part of his Navigator Stove Works line. So not only is it a delightful product, it’s also a local product, as well. Regular readers know how much I like to boosterize [is that a word?] this region’s rich maritime businesses, large and small.

At under 1 cubic foot, the Sardine weighs about 35 pounds, and requires a 4-inch chimney pipe. Believe it or not, this little wood (or hardwood charcoal) stove is rated as an 86%-efficient, non-catalytic “clean burning” stove, and carries U.S. EPA & State of Washington Emission Certifications.

The boat itself is worthy of some comment as well. I’ve been a “fan from afar” of Sam Devlin’s boats for some time. You can see all the designs at the Devlin Designing Boat Builders website.

This particular boat, homeported in Olympia, WA, has been christened Storm Petrel by new owner Cyndie Phelps. She was positively glowing this afternoon, showing off her pride and joy. Mr. Devlin was on hand as well, and confirmed that Ms. Phelps’ name for the boat would become the official name for the design, the Storm Petrel 33. Some additional information on the design is available here.

[Hobie unveiled the new Mirage Pro Angler at the Bassmaster Classic in Shreveport, LA last weekend. It's a new boat designed around the innovative Hobie Mirage Drive. There is a video to help introduce the boat, but I can't embed it here, so you'll have to click this link to see it.

Regular readers will recall that Navagear has long been fascinated by the Mirage drive system, and the boats designed for it. Perhaps you remember such classic Navagear posts as
And One Roto-Molded Kayak to Rule Them All and Hobie’s Inflatable Mirage-Drive Kayaks. The rest of the content below comes from Hobie. —Tim]

Oceanside, California – Long known for their expertise in building watercraft, Hobie Cat® introduces the Hobie Mirage Pro Angler fishing boat. Hobie has taken the defining feature used in their kayak line, the patented MirageDrive™ pedal system, and combined it with their proven boat-designing capabilities to build a first-in-class, no-gas required, 100-percent fishing machine… all at the affordable price of $2199, suggested retail. “The Pro Angler is small enough to let you access your favorite skinny water with unbelievable stability,” commented Hobie spokesperson and legendary bass fisherman, Hank Parker, “plus… it is large enough to provide plenty of room for multiple rods and tackle.”

The 13’ 8” Pro Angler is designed to facilitate the fishing experience for those who want the amenities of a large boat including stability and spacious storage combined with the user-friendly benefits of a smaller fishing boat such as light weight, maneuverability, and economic advantage. Anglers will be comfortable in all bodies of water, from narrow inland waterways to ocean coastlines. It also offers an affordable, human-powered, environmentally-friendly alternative to fishing from the shore. The Pro Angler boasts a weight capacity of over 600 pounds despite weighing in at only 138 pounds, fully rigged. The high quality, ergonomically-designed Cool Ride seat is wide, ventilated, and easily adjustable. The boat is both wide enough to allow ample freedom of movement and stable enough for anglers to stand up and cast, giving them the advantage of a better view of the water.

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Officially, the boat show doesn’t open for another half hour. But Navagear and Puget Sound Maritime are there! We do it all for you, our loyal readers.

I’ve got to say, things DO look different this year. There are far fewer huge boats. Some familiar vendors are not present this year. And while the show occupies both the Quest Field Events Center and South Lake Union, it does not extend onto Quest Field itself. My rough estimate, after spending about 30 minutes looking around, is that the vendor/boat presence is about 80-90% what it was last year.

Which is not to say “Don’t bother!” Even in my brief walk-through, it was obvious there were a lot of new boats, and a lot of new products. Also, there are a lot of established product lines that may deserve renewed attention in these tough economic times. Here are just a few examples.

Nordic Tugs has reintroduced their trailerable 26-footer. This was a great pocket cruiser, and I’m glad to see it’s back.

Gig Harbor Boat Works continues to produce wonderful modern interpretations of traditional small sailing and rowing boats.

And yeah, for those with lots of liquid capital, along with the rest of us looky-loos, there are still a lot of big boats. A garbage can has been provided for scale, I’m pretty certain.

Plus, from time to time amid the gloss and glitter of the new new NEW, you run across something that’s just charming. This is NOT a new production Ranger tug, but I wasn’t able to determine how old it is. Awww, it’s so cuuute!

Today, I got to see another Class B AIS installation on a small cruiser: Merv and Kathy Floyd’s Rosborough 25, Kingfisher II.

Perhaps you can tell from such clues as the dual VHF antennas aft, the dual GPS antennas and the dedicated AIS antenna just aft the radome that Merv and Kathy like to be prepared! The radar mast swings forward for trailering.

They had some help from Les at E.Q. Marine, the same talented fellow that commissioned Two Lucky Fish, my C-Dory 22. Here’s the port-side overhead console Les fabricated, with the ACR Nauticast B unit mounted where it’s not in the way, but where you can still see the status lamps. The power switch (”AIS”) and the silent mode switch (”stealth”) are visible on the right.

The windshield “wiper” switch on the left is there so that the passenger doesn’t have to ask the helmsman to “please run the wiper on my side.” In the Pacific Northwest, this feature is practically a must-have for cruising couples!

Also visible in the recessed “glove compartment” shown above is the serial cable for an auxiliary laptop, should one be brought on board. The AIS unit is connected to the boat’s Raymarine E120 chartplotter through an Actisense NDC-4-A NMEA multiplexer, which allows this extra NMEA output channel for a laptop.

Kingfisher II and Two Lucky Fish are hoping to do some on-the-water Class B testing this winter. Stay tuned!

By the way, it was just a little bit foggy today…all day, which is a little bit rare. Usually it burns off by noon or so. I took a lot of experimental pictures; here are a couple I liked. You can click to see the large version, suitable for desktop wallpaper, with all the foggy details!

This was a highlight of the Pacific Marine Expo last year, and this year was no different. In fact, our excitement last year inspired my daughter and me to get our own remote-control model boat, which we brought to the show this year.

Kiera is in the background, running our little tug, which is made up on the hip of a small scrap-metal barge.

New this year were RC helicopters taking off and landing from RC boats. Sorry the picture below is a little blurry, but the helicopter kept moving! It’s the dark blue blur directly above the transom of the yacht.

You can see the rotor wash affecting the surface of the water, which apparently made the landing pretty difficult…it was powerful enough to shove the yacht around on the pond! But after several approaches and aborted attempts, this landing was successful. (Not all landings were!)

The Pacific Marine Expo is not the only place you can see these boats, by the way. A local club, the Northwest R/C Ship Modelers, host events year-round, ranging from informal “fun floats” to the prestigious Foss Cup.

…And sometimes, that’s a GOOD THING!

The 23-foot Combo-Cruiser Amphibian, from 1970, was a unique design. At I guess, I’m thinking the product vision had the words “maximize cabin volume” somewhere near the top. Well above, say, “attractive, nautical appearance” or “seakindly hull form”.

Thanks to Telstar Logistics for alerting us to Google’s digitization of the vast photo archives of the former LIFE magazine.

I mentioned last week a boat I saw at the Boats Afloat Show. I wrote thusly: “a 23′ powerboat that could be described as the Norwegian version of my little C-Dory.”

Here it is, the little Skibsplast 730HT:

I can almost hear you saying “What?! That doesn’t look like a C-Dory!” No, it doesn’t. It doesn’t look like most American-designed boats. But it’s a compact, all-weather cabin cruiser, and it packs a lot of cruising features into a small package, much like the C-Dory, Sea Sport, and Arima boats do.

For instance, it’s got a fully-enclosed cabin, complete with…um…”Alaska bulkhead”. Sort of. It’s got a tiny enclosed head. It re-uses space at least three ways: a convertible forward-facing seat underway becomes an aft-facing dinette seat while in port; a fold-open galley surface encroaches into the helm seat area, acknowledging the fact that “cooking underway” virtually never occurs on small coastal cruisers; and the V-berth expands aft into the cabin at night.

This last feature is actually kind of unique. The forepeak, in and of itself, is really too small to accommodate a full-length V-berth. But it has a sort of “lid” enclosing it, which folds down an aft. Here’s the clever bit: Underway, in the closed position, the outside of this lid constitutes a forward companionway to the bow. The sloped windshield on the port side is a hatch, folding open and allowing one to walk right up onto the foredeck.

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