You don’t have to be Jesus to walk on water. The Hobie Mirage Eclipse, a new watercraft expected to be available here next month, can help you take a hike across the water without help from the heavens.

The Mirage Eclipse is a stand-up board equipped with Hobie’s MirageDrive. The technology was originally developed about 18 years ago for kayaks, with impressive results. A video shows a MirageDrive-equipped kayaker easily out-muscling an Olympic champion paddler in a kayak tug of war.

MirageDrive uses the rider’s legs to propel the board. On the Mirage Eclipse the rider stands on two pedals, pumping them up and down, while holding onto a T-shaped handlebar for balance and steering. The pedals drive two large fins underneath the board, making them flap back and forth and propelling the board forward.

“I loved it,” said Stan McCrea, kayak manager at Windward Boats in Kailua, the local Hobie dealer, who recently got a test paddle — or rather, test pedal — on the board at Hobie’s headquarters in Oceanside, Calif.

McCrea was impressed both by its speed — an estimated 7 mph, similar to what he can do on a MirageDrive kayak — and by its stability.

“Standing up is a testament to me that it’s very stable, because I’m very tall (6-foot-7) and my center of gravity is very high,” said McCrea, 49.

Just don’t expect Hobie to promote surfing waves on it, McCrea said.

“That large handle could really do damage if you dropped into a nice-size wave and wiped out,” he said. “I’m looking at it for Kaneohe Bay, for Hawaii Kai Marina, for Waikiki, for Ala Moana, all those places that are inside the reef. … Summertime North Shore, no-brainer. Maybe exercise in groups in marinas like Hawaii Kai.”

He’ll put the board to the test in rougher waters once he gets one out here, but experience tells him it should be especially good in windy conditions, the bane of regular kayakers and stand-up paddlers.

“You’ve got kind of a steady engine providing steady power, so your nose doesn’t get turned sideways by the wind like it would if you didn’t stroke fast enough,” he said.

Since the Mirage Eclipse does not require the upper-body strength needed in traditional surfing or stand-up paddling, he expects women to be intrigued by it. McCrea showed a video of it at a recent ocean expo and said mostly women signed up for more information.

“I can see them watching it and thinking, ‘I can do this. This is fun. This is exercise,’” he said.

He thinks guys will like it, too, but admitted that it might be especially useful as a bargaining chip. Get your wife or girlfriend a Mirage Eclipse, he said, and she’ll “allow you to buy your own new toy.”

The board comes in two sizes, a 10-foot-6 and a 12-foot. Windward Boats expects to have them on sale in late May, priced at $2,700 to $2,800. Plenty Pupule Kayaks in Kailua-Kona on Hawaii island is also expected to carry them.