New Age Kayaks/Hobie Does It Again

I went up to a place called Wind Toys in Santa Rosa recently to pick up a boat trailer. I was surprised to see not only the huge inventory of kayaks in the store, but the variety of kayaks available nowadays. I used to fish out of a kayak 20 years ago, but I haven’t looked in on the kayak scene recently. Hobie Alter, designer of the Hobie Cat and other tuned-in watercraft, has a whole new line of kayaks. A bunch of them are propelled by foot pedals that power two underwater flippers, much like a penguin’s flippers. There are foot-propelled kayaks made for fishing, high-speed lightweight kayaks, tandems, racing kayaks, kayaks with sails. There’s one with a great sun parasol on an aluminum mast. If you live in the San Francisco area and are into kayaks, I’d check these guys out. They’re on Santa Rosa Ave (the same street as Friedman’s). You can also check out Hobie Kayaks at:

https://www.hobiecat.com/kayaking/index.html

Some of the kayaks at Wind Toys in Santa Rosa, Calif.

Kayak with sail

About Lloyd Kahn

Lloyd Kahn started building his own home in the early '60s and went on to publish books showing homeowners how they could build their own homes with their own hands. He got his start in publishing by working as the shelter editor of the Whole Earth Catalog with Stewart Brand in the late '60s. He has since authored six highly-graphic books on homemade building, all of which are interrelated. The books, "The Shelter Library Of Building Books," include Shelter, Shelter II (1978), Home Work (2004), Builders of the Pacific Coast (2008), Tiny Homes (2012), and Tiny Homes on the Move (2014). Lloyd operates from Northern California studio built of recycled lumber, set in the midst of a vegetable garden, and hooked into the world via five Mac computers. You can check out videos (one with over 450,000 views) on Lloyd by doing a search on YouTube:

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