Hi folks. This is my first post here. This forum was suggested by someone on Reddit.
I am not an efoiler. I am a manual power, SUP surfer. I surf in Sant Cruz CA and I also have a place in Punta Mita, Mexico.
What I want to do is add powder to a kayak that I will use to tow my SUP to surf breaks in Mexico that are about 1.5miles away from my entry point. My goal is not speed but distance. Some guys in Mexico tried the Boost Fin from Amazon but the battery is too small for the required distance. While it is “airplane legal” there is no point going that route if the battery is too small.
for my Plan A, I bought a Sea Eagle 300x kayak package that came with a Bixpy K1 motor and battery. I underestimated how difficult it would be to get that battery pack from California to Mexico. Bixpy won’t ship to Mexico and the battery has too much capacity to bring on an airline. Getting my Bixpy battery to Mexico is still an open issue and I am happy to talk about that but not really the point of my thread here.
As plan B, I bought a Kedean fin-drive, 24V 600W system. This product was on AliExpress. I built a battery case that contains four 6S 6200mAh LiPo batteries. Each battery is 156 Wh so just under the 160 Wh limit to bring in ones carry-on luggage. Between my wife and I, we can bring the four batteries down to Mx on our next trip. I have that system running on my bench and it may be fine as is. With the four Lipos, I have almost 640 Wh.
I am also now looking into a Plan C. In all my digging and searching, I found the Flipsky site. They have any number of fin-drive style products. However, most of them see to be fairly high power systems, optimized for 12S, and rated at 3-6kW. I know they would run at lower power on 6S but I was wondering which one of their fin-drives is best suited for distance cruising a kayak. I can configure my LiPos for 12S but I think that could be overkill unless it would be more efficient that way.
Also, I wanted to ask if there are any other good sources for lower power fin dives (let’s say around 1 kW) besides Flipsky. I’d like to buy a complete system except for the battery because of the transportation issues. Everything has to be able to take on a plane (Alaska Air).