Electric assisted peddle power kayak

KaiWren

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Jan 8, 2016
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I was looking at the Hobie Mirage drive the other day and thinking how cool it would be to have a peddle powered kayak when I thought, how hard would it be to turn a mid-drive electric bike system into something similar?

I'm currently riding a BBSHD on a fatbike but I have my previous BBS02 sitting collecting dust. Has anyone thought about taking that system complete with peddles and adding it to some kind of water drive? I know paddle wheels would be the simplest method of harnessing the chain drive but I was thinking a propeller system, maybe through a right angle gearbox?

What kind of gear ratios are we looking for in this situation?
 
I've spent a lot of time contemplating something similar as well. The problem with the mirage drive in this application is that the pedaling motion is reciprocal rather than circular, so it doesn't couple mechanically with something like a BBSXX style mid-drive in a straightforward manner. At least not as easily as the bicycle chain driven human powered boats that are out there which are turning a propeller.

Have a look at the many links from the openwaterbike project page if you haven't already
http://www.openwaterbike.com/

The most common of these drives is either a twisted chain that reorients the axis of rotation 90 degrees from the crank to the propeller under the boat, or a long flexible drive shaft with a right angle gearbox coming off the side. Both of these would be very straightforward to add assist with a bottom bracket mid-drive since they're using rotating cranks.

Normally the total gear ratio is on the order of 6:1, with the propellers spinning underwater at around 500-600 rpm, and that's within the realm of what you can do with a single stage gear transmission from the pedals to the propeller shaft.

There are sine giid discussion of this topic on the various boat forums and HPV forums, but I'd like to see more electric assisted watercraft talk here on ES too. It's an area that hasn't been explored nearly as much as it should be since there's a lot of potential overlap with with ebike gear.
 
From the time I first saw this in the 60's or so (http://www.simplicityboats.com/showboat.htm), the kid in me still dreams a bit. ESPECIALLY with the evolving technologies every year since!!! Maybe a fun winter grandkid project,... heck, I ain't dead yet!

But I do enjoy my comfy fishing kayak a LOT! Even tows behind my bike! Still,.... when your hands are full on the water, and NOT with the paddle, I sometimes think of such a mod, but I'm not really fond of most of what's currently available. Although nicely equipped for a rudder,... I doubt I'd ever use it much, so I've not even included THAT, unless a nice mod caught my eye. Would be especially nice for that loooong ride back after an exciting and tiring day on a big lake.

So I'm gonna watch this one,....
 
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