His driving of the F16 was a great success, if memory serves me, he home built a Taipan 4.9 then worked out to widen it with spin etc. from there the F16 organisation seemed to get momentum with him at the helm. He had to be reminded a few times he didn't design the Taipan 4.9 but generally he did well.

You missed the joke, but yes, he did a lot for the class and website.

I think he even showed up at Nigel's spring fever event at Lake Lanier one year?

I got the joke, FWIW...

I do remember Wouter really getting into the F12, seeing it as a great prospect for youth. I don't think I realized that there was a significant group of other people involved (he did monopolize those discussions, IIRC).

Mike

It started as a group of people wanting to do a new junior cat, turned into an F12 program steered by Wouter, then we needed rules, I ended up just buying 5 little cats to get the junior sailing going and gave up on the F12

I've been on that ride before. I hope it goes better for you than it did for me. Seems like operating costs are way lower than they were a decade later, at least.


And losing a forum, with all the knowledge inherent in it, is a m-a-s-s-i-v-e loss to the affected hobby. Google Wayback only gets you so far...

Randii

I got the joke and I remember the sh!t storm that followed and it still makes me chuckle, the old days, good times. Can you name the originator of the joke?

Not missing Wouter!

I haven't been active on the forum, or sailing for a bit. I sold my last boat two years ago because I wasn't using it and I could use the capital for expanding and growing my company. My little business has been taking all of my time to the tune of 70+ hours a week. No time for sailing, or much of anything else, unfortunately.

Sailing is such a massive time suck if you want to enjoy it. I hated being rushed driving to an event, or being rushed setting up the boat at an event. I had a 4-5 hour drive for most regatta's, and in order for me to do that means leaving at noon at the latest. I like checking things over carefully, a part or line failure on the water pissed me off to no end if avoidable. You can't control the weather, you can't control the competition, but you can control your own little floating world and there's no reason to sacrifice the time and expense of attending an event only to have failures. Showing up at 8pm the night before, getting up butt crack early while tired and grumpy to put the boat together in the dark is pretty much an open invitation for things to get FUBAR. I can't focus when I'm flying off the handle angry, sailing well takes some focus.

As far as decreased traffic on the forum, we've kinda beat every topic to death. Only to resurrect them, and beat them to death all over again. We've just ran out of **** to talk about, and that happened quite a while ago.

That's why I bought a house on a lake, so I can walk out my back door and sail for an hour or two, then put the boat away with no setup-breakdown required.

Look for a place on a lake Karl, I heard there's like 10,000 of them up there!

Yeah, and they're about $10,000 per square foot too

Wouter is doing OK. Pretty busy running a business and lecturing at Uni. When I last spoke to him he didn't have time to sail.
We all go through these phases .

I was posting in the folding Trimaran forum, detailing the build of an F85SR Mad Hatter.
Now it is built I sail and write reports but they are usually posted on Facebook.

People got older and race less often so that takes A LOT of the conversation away.

Not as many younger people got into, and/or stayed in the sport, especially at the intense level so many of us were involved before.

There are way more recreational choices now than a generation ago and children's sports have developed to require a far greater time (and money) commitment than in the past that limits other choices for a family.

Another big consideration is that much information about products is available on the web and most people have easy access to that info. Much of what we used to ask about is more quickly and easily answered online from the usual sources and more people have learned that they can find it easily enough on their own.

So, less use of the forums.

i took a long time off from this forum. the "drill baby drill" thread ruined catsailor for me by showing me a side of some of my friends i couldn't stomach. older? sure. wiser? prob not.

i'm still racing on a variety of boats, but not as often as i did a decade ago. own an F16 (falcon) and it has become my most favorite cat ever, even though it is likely just a fad. soured on volunteering and took much of what's happened within US SAILING personally - ironically, it has been 10 years since i was given the CREW award.

picked up a couple of other hobbies and i've put a lot of time into my kid - she's coming along nicely.

nice to see some names i associate with really good memories. grateful for damon's efforts to keep this site going following rick's passing.

Besides all the other reasons give (the fighting, trolling, all topics beaten to death)

the web 2.0 (user generated content) was the dawn of social media (circa 2005) and the beginning of the end for most forums

I think Facebook has drastically reduced the use of the forum - despite the fact that it makes for a terrible repository of data and is not searchable

Hi John,

I have the Falcon's predecessor, a Blade F-16 and love it; with the self-tacking jib, my wife likes to sail again - I have made some nice wings for it so it is our "cruising boat" now. It is as fun to sail as the Boyer A class cat I had but unlike the A cat, I can leave the mast up on it and be sailing in just a few minutes. The spinnaker makes it faster than the A cat and the snuffer makes that easy. The light weight makes my back happy so it is also my favorite cat now with a nice mix of all the desired traits!

wings on a blade! please post pics, mike. agree on all points - rolling up the beach or the ramp at the end of the day with a boat i can move around by myself is a joy.

still grateful to you for the effort you put into the mystere 4.3 - i really liked that boat, and seeing so many on the start line at spring fever years ago was a hoot.

hope you and yours are well and happy!

Hi John, glad to see you check in. Rarely check this forum, but was shopping for some used Wave parts for Sail Sand Point in Seattle. www.sailsandpoint.org.
The Hobie Fleet in Seattle, and the NW is going strong, with a lot of new youth and new familys. Mostly due to the efforts of Laura Sullivan and Peter Nelson. They are setting up a nonprofit to serve the Youth program. I even checked the Politics...section, and see Mike, Hobie1616 is still busy talking too himself, pages 75-81.
Regards, Caleb

Come on back, the site is back in business.

I still cruise through from time to time. I miss my "glory days" of cat sailing, but times change. I've been doing the majority of my sailing on a 1D35 out of Charleston with a few trips a year on other boats up the east coast. I do not miss all the off-topic BS threads that went around the forum.

And I do miss Todd Hart.

I ended up with a severe burn-out which prevented me from doing much of anything for some years. My sailing suffered a lot as my physical condition took a nose-dive.
My boat however (1985 Nacra 5.2, with added spin and removed center bar, square-top main and beam-sheeted blade jib), is still doing fine. Its time to re-gel the hulls though, they look like a slippery rock you might see in a river somewhere. I swear folks in ship-shape yachts turn around when I greet them, pretending not to have seen the Frankenboat... Do I give a $h17?
I'm faster than their 4KSBs anyway..