I had a couple of years off prior to last season. As a mature aged sailor I was getting a bit tired of the 'rig, launch the fleet, race (best bit), retrieve the fleet, de-rig ritual'. I race every Satdy at our river club from September to end April and do the odd 2/3 day regatta. We have roughly 10/15 14ft cats each week at the club to dolly across the grass to the sandy beach and into the river. While putting them in isn't too painful, dragging the buggers out across the sand and up the grassy slope is a bloody pain in the proverbial ar$.
As I said, it all got too hard and so because of that, and some other issues which I wont go into, I gave it all up and parked the boat.
I've been riding my 'sit down and walk' (bicycle) for the last six years and I'm now a lot fitter but really, I just see it getting all too difficult again and the most frustrating thing is I'm loading up the boat with all this clobber which is a bit like dressing up parade float and somehow sacrilegious.
I mean you wouldn't put a kite on an 'A' (well I wouldn't anyway).
Apart from all that, one of the big, big attributes of 14ft sailing IS the low cost simplicity of having a smaller, more manageable boat and a cat rigged 14 is the epitome of that philosophy. No, I'm not convinced the 430 needs a kite, not with me on it anyway.
Bern