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Dilemma for Pelican Hydryve: buy a Hobie replacement drive or a whole new pedal kayak (eg: Old Town)
updated 11 months, 1 week ago
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I’ve had my Pelican Catch 130 Hydryve for a couple of years and have had the drive warrantied several times now. I’m probably harder on the drive than most since I’m trolling – each trip out I’m pedaling steady for 3-4 hours at 2.5-3.0 mph.
Sooner or later Pelican will stop servicing the drive and I want to continue pedal kayak fishing because it’s fantastic.
So I’m trying to decide, long term, whether I’ll be better off buying a Hobie mirage drive and keeping the rest of the Pelican kayak, or replacing the entire kayak and drive and going with something like an Old Town (a full Hobie setup is probably out of my budget).
Aside from the drive, the rest of the Pelican kayak has held up well. It’s stable, I’ve got it kitted out how I like, but I also haven’t been in other boats so don’t know what additional features I might be missing.
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Just buy another kayak, don’t buy just the drive for the Pelican hull. Saw many reviews and videos on the Pelican hull, compared with other hulls, and it’s not the great. Put the money towards a new pedal drive kayak.
My #1 on the list will be Old Town PDL, great pedal drive kayak. My #2 will be Perception Crank 2.0, smaller kayak, cheap – closer to a Pelican kayak, but well built and with a mature and reliable drive.
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If you can find a 180 MD with the turbo fins, for a reasonable price, go for it. It would be a nice upgrade, and the drives are much more reliable than what I’ve heard about the pelican made drives.
Otherwise, have you considered a passport? It’s more in your price range, and while it’s not as solid construction of a rotomolded hull that you get in the outback or compass, I think it’s still superior to pelican.
I don’t think I could go to using a propeller drive after using a MD. The motion is so natural and effortless, especially for trolling. I just have a cadence that I use and know that will keep me at a certain speed.
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Another question I have is how fast can you go in a propeller style drive vs. fins? Trout trolling speeds seem to favour the 2.5-3.0 mph range, and in the Pelican that’s about at the upper end of what I can maintain for a few hours on the water.
In other words, it’s a struggle to keep up on longer trips, and a new drive that’s slower will require a bigger effort or shorter trips.
