For as long as I have been racing catamarans, Hobie has had a policy of actively driving a wedge between Hobies and other multihulls. It is not about one design racing, it is one brand racing. Sure there are some one-design fleets, but there are enough orphan Hobies to make up an open fleet at many of their regattas. A lone H14 Turbo, H21, TheMightyHobie18 FX or other oddball Hobie is more than welcome at any Hobie regatta. So stop insulting our intelligence with this one-design stuff. Hobie is and always has been about one brand racing.

From reading many of the posts on this thread & on other related threads, it appears that a lot of Hobie sailors have no idea of how Hobie Inc (NAHCA, IHCA & Hobie Cat Company) has treated the rest of the multihull community (x-boats in Hobie-speak) over the years. To provide some insight, the following are my experiences with Hobie Inc. as a one design x-boater for 25 years.

My first multihull experience was crewing on a Hobie 18 in 1977. We raced almost every weekend with the Ford Lake Sail Club. At that time the club consisted of a Hobie 16 fleet, a fleet of miscellaneous monohulls that raced in a Portsmouth fleet & us, a lone Hobie 18. The Hobie 16’s welcomed their brother Hobie with open arms. In addition to their usual fleet scoring, they scored an overall multihull winner using Portsmouth handicapping.

In 1978, I purchased a NACRA 5.2 because it had the same Portsmouth number as the Hobie 18 and my girlfriend & I were too light for the Hobie 18. The plan was we would race head to head with my buddy on his Hobie 18. First across the line wins! Neither of us had yet raced one-design. When I showed up at the first Ford Lake regatta in the Spring of 1978 with my brand new NACRA 5.2 looking to race head to head with the Hobie 18 (he was still the only one) I was told to leave. I was told that it was a Hobie only club. I pointed to the monohulls and said that there were several brands of boat racing in the Portsmouth fleet & asked why multihulls were any different. I don’t recall what if any logic they provided in response. I do recall being booted our of there.

Fortunately for my racing, I found CRAM. At the time CRAM was one half to three quarters Hobie. At various regattas CRAM also had one design fleets of Tornadoes, Sharks, Sol Cats, NACRA 5.2’s, Prindle 16’s and A-Boats. It also had a fleet of Portsmouth boats which was and is till this day the fleet of last resort for boats that don’t have enough entries to qualify as a fleet. My friend with his Hobie 18 & I both discovered the joys of one-design racing with CRAM.

When we started sailing with them, there was a Hobie Fleet under the umbrella of CRAM. That CRAM Hobie Fleet hosted two points regattas a year for several years. Those points regattas also had several one-design fleets of "x-boat" classes. In the early to mid 80’s, our friends at Division 10 kept adding to the list of requirements for us to host a points regatta. They told us that NAHCA (or whatever it was called at the time) was tightening up the points regatta criteria and they were passing them through. It became more and more difficult to comply with their demands. When we were not able to comply with their demands, they took away our points regattas. That was the beginning of the end of the Hobie fleets within CRAM.

Today, the serious Hobie racers in Southeast Michigan head to New York State to race with the Rocheseter & Syracuse Hobie fleets. That is an additional 2 to 4 hours of driving time over what it would take to come to a CRAM regatta. If not for the Hobie policy, I am sure that we would still have active viable Hobie fleets in Michigan.

Tom Liston
NACRA F-18 #79