On ya bike!

This post is about our hunt for the bikes that will accompany us on our voyages.

When living aboard, bicycles are the equivalent of your car. Essential for exploring, picking up groceries, and important stuff like hauling booze.

Usual suspects

2 brands are consistently recommended in the cruising boat forums: Brompton and Dahon. These are folding bikes that are really awesome if space is at a premium. Check out this thing of beauty:

The problem for us is how much load they can handle. E.g. Brompton recommend a max load of 240 lbs (110 Kg). Now, I'm 6' 4" (193 cm give or take) and "larger framed" let's say. Me plus a six pack would push us well over the Safe Working Load.

Somebody bring me some water

Probably the worst place to keep a bike, especially one made with steel bits, is in a salt water environment. Corrosion is a killer. So the goal is to choose a bike with fewer bits that can corrode.

First stop, the chain. Behold, the Gates Carbon Drive! Requires no oil and will not rust, and virtually maintenance free. Going with a belt drive also means no derailleur (traditional bike gears) so no messy lubricant and again removing a part that can rust.

Next stop, the frame itself. Ideally it will be aluminium as it's lighter (and also doesn't rust).

And in line with the low maintenance path: hydraulic brakes.

It's Electrifying!

E-Bikes are all the rage nowadays so we figured since this was going to be our main means of transport it would be worth the extra bucks.

Without giving too much away about what we ended up getting, I can tell you that going electric was a game changer. Hills are so easy now. It really opens up all sorts of journeys you would not of thought of undertaking on a bike previously. You still get a workout, but now you decide how much work you want to do. We are finding we are taking the bikes out in preference to the cars.

Requirements

Ok, so far we've narrowed it down to:

• Able to tolerate a salt water environment
• Low maintenance
• Electric because we are lazy buggers

In addition:

• Comfortable for longer rides (i.e. 20+ km) so battery life comes into play
• Light weight to make it easy to get on/off the boat

Storage

One more thing to consider was where we would stow the bikes on the boat. Most folks will put them in the lazarette (a locker at the back of the boat). In our case we have the luxury of utilizing the space a catamaran brings to the table. We have specified a purpose built locker in the bow (front) of Pikorua that we'll use as our bike lockers.

Since it a good sized locker we wouldn't need to go with a fully folding model.

The short list

To figure out the short list and see what was available we visited the bigger bike shops here in Sydney. I came away disappointed - they were keen to sell us what they stock versus what would be best for us. So I turned to sleuthing online. In the end we whittled down the universe of ebikes out there to just 3 (taking into account what is available to us in Oz):

• Carbo X
• Tern HSD
• Riese & Müller Tinker Vario

The Carbo being the lightest at ~13 kg looked good on paper but unfortunately they don't offer test rides. They suggest you purchase it and if you don't like it return the bike and get a refund. Yeah, nah.

The HSD and Tinker are 'compact cargo' bikes and have very similar specs on paper. I'd already taken the HSD for a spin and was pretty impressed, but Christine found it a little bulky and cumbersome. Luckily there is a bike shop in Sydney stocking the HSD and Tinker, plus the Brompton, so after waiting for Covid restrictions to ease up we tee'd up a time to take all 3 for a spin and head to head comparisons. The results:

• The Brompton felt underpowered and quite fragile. Should it encounter a decent pot hole I was worried it would disintegrate beneath me. Cross that one off. In fairness, the way it folded was an engineering marvel and it looked so cute...
• The HSD and Tinker both felt very comfortable and well constructed.
• The Tinker was slightly shorter and handled slightly better than the HSD.

And that was it. We went with the Tinker. I think if it was more about hauling stuff the HSD would get the nod, but the feeling when riding the Tinker was that it was superior in the comfort and handling department so that gave it a small advantage.

Tinker features

The main features we like in the Tinker Vario:

• Ergonomics: changing the power assist mode is really simple. It becomes second nature and you don't need to think about it.
• "Thud buster" seat, 16" fat tyres and front fork suspension make for a comfy ride.
• There are no gears. It has "Continuously Variable Hub Transmission" which means you twist the grippy thing on the handlebars until it becomes easy to ride and you can change gears while stationary.
• The Bosch 500 watt performance line motor has enough power for what we are doing and battery life hasn't been an issue. The longest trip has been around the 40 km mark.
• Has a cargo rack and carrying capacity that should easily accomodate supermarket trips.

On the downsides:

• They are quite heavy (around 54 lbs) so time will tell how it goes getting it on/off the tender.
• They were the most expensive of the bunch.

After 2 months so far we are loving the bikes. As I mentioned above, electric makes all the difference. We are riding everywhere now.