UP RIVERS without a paddle.

Byline: Mike Stahlberg The Register-Guard

To turn heads, a boat usually must be very large, very expensive, or very, very fast.

The Mokai is small enough to car-top, sells for less than $3,500, and goes no more than 15 miles per hour at full throttle.

Yet everywhere Andrew Kumler and Joe Strub of Eugene go with their Mokais, heads definitely turn.

"I get huge reactions everywhere," said Kumler, who purchased one of the first Mokais in Oregon about 15 months ago. "I've been flagged down from the shoreline. People come running out of their houses with their cameras. People pull up next to me while I'm towing it on the freeway, trying to ask me about it while we're driving down the road ... Everywhere we go it's like an attention magnet."

The focus of all this attention is an unusual-looking craft - part kayak, part hydrofoil and part jet-boat - designed to tackle shallow rivers without the need to arrange a shuttle back to the put-in, as is required with paddle craft or drift boats.

A motorized kayak is what inventor Rick Murray and his partner, Marie Sprock, of Newburgh, N.Y., had in mind in the mid-1990s when they set out to design a "nooks and crannies type of boat for exploring and fishing."

"The essence of our original idea was the kayak," Murray said, "and the name Mokai meant motorized kayak."

From the side, a Mokai looks like a sit-on-top kayak. But from above, it looks more like a mini-hydrofoil, with a monocoque hull.

"We discovered a lot of limitations to the kayak design when adding an engine," Murray said. "So we came up with something new, something more stable while stationary and more efficient under power.

"It grew out of the kayak, but we always called our concept a small jet boat."

The Mokai is powered by a six-horsepower four-stroke Honda engine, which is started by yanking on a pull-cord handle at the front of the open cockpit in the molded polyethylene hull. The engine will run eight hours on a three-gallon tank of gas.

The engine, mounted in an enclosed compartment behind the cockpit, drives a small axial-flow water jet propulsion system designed by Murray, who once worked as a machinist for auto racer Dan Gurney.

A small handle mounted to the right side of the cockpit serves as combination twist-throttle and joy stick - pull back to turn one way and push forward to turn the other.

The jet pump has enough power to push the boat, which draws only four inches of water, upriver against a stiff current.

Kumler and Strub have covered the entire lower McKenzie River (Armitage Park to Leaburg Dam) and the town section of the Willamette River.

"There's a couple of tight spots," on the Willamette, Kumler said. "It's a little tricky, but you can make it through there ... what's nice going upstream is you can kind of hover below a rapid and pick your line without getting out to walk around the rapid.

"Then I get my momentum built up and hit the slot I think is the best place."

Kumler purchased a trailer on which to tow his boat behind his camper, but the Mokai was designed to be carried on top of a car. The engine, which weighs 28 pounds, can be removed or installed in less than a minute without the use of tools. The plastic gas tank also lifts out, leaving a 100-pound hull that can be carried on a canoe rack, or tied down in the bed of a pickup truck, as Strub does with his.

Murray and Sprock began work on their first sport utility boat in 1998 in the Hudson Valley, an hour north of Manhattan. The boat made its debut at the New York Boat Show in January 2000.

Since then, the Mokai has gradually found a niche market among fishermen and duck hunters around the world.

Mokai Manufacturing doesn't disclose the number of boats it produces.

"That's a proprietary number," Sprock said. "But we sell out our production every month."

However, one magazine said the seven employees in Mokai Manufacturing's 9,600 square-foot building "turn out about $100,000 worth of product each month," which would be 25 to 30 boats a month.

Mokais have been shipped as far away as Chile and New Zealand, and outfitters in Hawaii and South Carolina offer coastal tours on which each participant operates a Mokai.

"Seventy-five percent of the boats we sell are to fishermen, and I would say 80 percent of those are fly-fishermen," Sprock said.

Kumler is a dedicated fly angler who says the Mokai allows him to fish areas that are difficult or impossible to access with other boats.

Kumler has a rod holder mounted to his hull. But he says the Mokai is actually stable enough stand up in and cast while anchored or while drifting through a calm run where the fish are rising.

"I'll run to the top of a run in the middle of the river, shut the motor off, then stand up and get my pole out and cast to rising fish or dead drift a nymph or steelhead fly and catch fish as I drift downstream," Kumler said. "Then, as I get to the bottom the run, I'll sit back down, fire up the motor and either go back up and do it again or continue downstream to a different hole."

And Mokai anglers are not limited to trout.

While fishing for steelhead from his Mokai in the Willamette River near Day Island Park, Strub hooked an 18-pound chinook salmon - which provided extra excitement given that Strub had no net. However, he eventually was able to tire the fish enough to allow him to "tail" it and lift it into the cockpit.

While the Mokai offers a lot of "pros" in terms of access, convenience and ease of operation, there are definitely some "cons" as well.

One disadvantage Mokai owners talk about on Internet chat sites is that the engine noise is quite loud when running at full throttle. Another is that the operator is going to get wet if there's much wave action or chop on the surface of the water because the hull tends to dig into rollers, sending spray over the bow. (Spray skirts are available as an optional accessory.)

And, as with any jet boat, the water intakes for the jet pump can get clogged by weeds or moss. Unlike most jet boats, however, the Mokai's pump cannot be reversed to flush the material away. So the intake must be cleaned by hand.

"Sometimes I wish they had a two-seater or one that's a little wider so you can take somebody with you," Kumler said. "And sometimes I wish there was a little more RPM.

"Like they told me at the factory," he said. "if you're going from a kayak to a Mokai, it's going to be great. But if you're going from a larger motorboat to a Mokai it might not be as nice because you're used to the greater power."

MEET THE MOKAI

The Mokai sport utility boat is manufactured and sold factory-direct by Mokai Manufacturing Inc. of Newburgh, NY (www.mokai.com). Here are some specifications:

Tale of the tape: Length, 11 feet, 6 inches. Maximum width, 36 inches. Weight: hull, 100 pounds; engine 28 pounds. Draft, 4 inches.

Power plant: Removable four-stroke, six-horsepower Honda engine.

Propulsion system: Proprietary design axial-flow jet pump.

Hull: Molded polyethylene monocoque design in blue, olive green, or yellow.

Capacity: 360 pounds.

Top speed: 15 miles per hour on flat water.

Range: Eight hours on one three-gallon tank of gasoline.

Accessories included: Weather cover; engine storage/carry bag; paddle; USCG-approved fire extinguisher; two 12-foot tie-down straps; bearing grease with custom applicator gun; and "survival pack" with whistle, mirror and distress signalers.

Price: $3,450.

- Mokai Manufacturing, Inc.