I have a Hobie TI now and have owned either an AI or TI since 2010. Because you can easily roll the sail up (furl), this boat has no boom which somewhat hurts the performance as a sailboat. If you dont pedal and just sail the boat, in lighter winds I think its in the ballpark with maybe a sunfish - not at all bad but also not that great. But.. if you add in the mirage drive pedaling (which works great), now you can beat a lot of sailboats especially in very light wind. Maybe that is cheating.. but I own that boat because it has the mirage drives and it would be silly to pay for the drives (adds about a grand to the price) and not use them plus great exercise so I always do.
As the wind picks up, those boats will exceed "conventional hull speed" for their length. Pretty easy to spend a lot of time in the 6 knot range and my peak speed on a deep downwind run in a fair amount of wind has been around 10.5 knots. The Hobie TI when sailed from the back seat is just the master at downwind in windy conditions. When its windy, there is nothing else I would rather be in over the Hobie TI.
As just a sailboat, the Hobies are not that impressive but where they really excel is wind range. No wind they are fun to pedal. With the stability of the tri and the infinitely and very easy to reef sail, they have a huge easy to use wind range. Its really a fun boat on a day with a lot of wind even in conditions where the sailboat is more survival mode than fun. They are about "water hikes" and going somewhere rather than just sailing. Its a very versatile boat which ends up hurting its identy. Some people only sail them, some people get them for fishing. I use it for water hikes and almost always have some destination in mind.
These dont come with a method to mount an outboard but lots of people do (I did). I use a 2.5 hp Susuki four stroke which gets the TI up to near 7 knots a full throttle with just myself in the boat.
Here is a somewhat poorly edited video of how I use that boat. I used the 2.5 hp outboard to motor way up the Colorado river (ie the ski lift idea) then did a many mile sail back.
The video below was from one of the most fun sailing days Ive had and it includes a collision between two Hobies (yep.. Im the clown who hit the other guy). This was NOT about right of way so no need to comment on that. It was about two people sailing like teenagers who just stole a couple cars and were doing some real dumb stuff..
