What started out as a personal project to add an electric motor to a kayak quickly turned into a commercial enterprise for Paul Howey. Howey wanted to create a quiet and easy way to navigate the waters without having to paddle himself. The system he designed mounts an electric motor to the front of an existing kayak. Alternatively, a complete electric kayak can be purchased from Kayacht if you don't want to do any of the installation work yourself. An electric trolling motor provides thirty pounds of thrust and uses AGM lead-acid batteries to allow for around four hours of propulsion if you are willing to paddle along. If you don't want to be an integral part of this hybrid system, expect around forty-five minutes of power when moving at a brisk pace using the motor only. This is no replacement for a proper boat, but we can imagine having some relaxing fun out on the lake with a machine such as this.

[Source: Gizmag]

As a follow-up to our post yesterday about the guy who set a new human powered boating world record of 107 miles by pedalling straight for 24 hours, I decided to show you this invention, the Hobie Mirage Adventure Island, a 16' Trimaran "Sail/yak". What in the world is a "sail/yak? Good question. If you can't tell by the big picture above, what you are looking at is a kayak with two outboard floats (making the vessel a trimaran) which has pedals and a sail. Therefore, you could pedal, row or sail using the wind. A tribrid, and all options use no fossil fuels, obviously.

The inventiveness does not stop there, though. The pedal drive operates flippers, generating thrust in the same way that a dolphin swims. The machine is not cheap, though. If you've got a spare three grand or so and want to give it a try, let us know how it goes. The rest of us will just make do with our goggles and flippers. Sheesh.

[Sorce: Hobie Kayak via Gizmag]

How do you take a completely carbon free form of transportation and mess it all up? By strapping a jet engine onto a kayak, and then proceeding to race it against a 4X4 Land Rover... thing! Richard Hammond from Top Gear says that the kayak is rubbish without an engine. The inventor of the machine has kayak'ed down a 65 foot vertical drop, so he is probably the perfect person to pilot a machine such as this one, especially considering that this little race takes place in, get this... an ice filled lake in Iceland.

I'm not entirely sure why this race took place, but it fits in just right on Top Gear. They are always pulling off crazy stunts like this one. I have gone kayaking before, and the whole point is to enjoy the scenery while getting in some good upper-body exercise. This defeats the point. If I'm gonna jet ski, I want a jet ski; if I'm gonna kayak, I want to row. As a side note, Hammond has not exactly had the best luck when it comes to vehicles powered by jet engines. This would be better if it was powered by biodiesel! Anyway, I hope you enjoy the video!

[Source: Youtube via Engadget]

As part of a student competition, designers I. Kiryakov, S. Ballmeier, K. Eichelberg & M. Dressler have attached an exercise machine to a high-speed canoe hull, and called it the Tu-Fin. The vehicle transfers the movement of the stepping user to forward motion using a flipper, according to Treehugger. What benefit does this offer to the more standard rowing that would take place in a normal canoe or kayak? None really, unless you are in need of leg exercise as opposed to arm exercise. Whatever your goal, it is pretty cool and vehicles powered by human strength always get a thumbs-up from us.

[Source: Treehugger]