When push comes to shoove any small catamaran can be used as a youth trainer/beginner boat. Sailing is sailing and anything with two hulls is a catamaran.

Still there are other considerations that we like to factor in. The Hobie Wave doesn't really come out on top in those area's and as the Wave is pretty non existant in area's outside of USA the choice for any cat or even a new design is pretty open. All will have to be grown from the bottom up in several world area's anyway so why not see if we can get to total balance right.

Personally, I feel the wave is not sexy enough to attract the youngsters of today and it also weights ALOT (it is heavier then a F16 !) , It's rig can be much improved and the image of the Wave is wrong in my opinion. It is mostly a resort boat and not really a performance oriented youth trainer. Comments I gethered last year about youth sailing the Wave were not overwhelmingly positive. As such it is not a clear winner, several of us feel the design can easily be improved upon. I do feel the youth deserve us getting their design right.

A side consideration is that the F12 is moving in a direction that is much cheaper and easily repaired using local resources. The unstayed rig is easily build/repaired by Dad using a metal saw and screw driver.

But I fully admit that other people may weight these points differently. We'll see which design wins out in the end.

Wouter