Category: First Person Account

I arrived on the beach Wednesday morning at around eleven, once there I noticed that quite a few people had already setup their boats to compete in the Texel Dutch Open (6 round-the-cans races) which would start at twelve. A beautiful day with sunshine, no surf, and light winds. After setting up the boat I went for a sail to see if I hadn't forgotten anything, apart from a few minor details everything was ready for action. After sailing I met up my fellow club members which had already setup their tents on a nice camping close to the beach.

On Thursday we went for a sail (The "Horstocht") to the south of the island for free fish and drinks, it gives you a good opportunity to scout the south of the island for the race on Saturday. Its a tricky place with shoals, sandbanks, currents and tides. As always people try to go as far outside the channel markers as possible which makes for the usual capsizes and groundings. Since there were no more than 8-10kts of wind there where no serious problems.

Friday was a cold day (12C/53F), to cold for me anyway! This gave me a good opportunity to take pictures and follow the racing. First stop was the Pit Lane's Hobie Europe stand with the very cool looking Hobie Fox Extreme, this all-carbon beast was built to take line honors and maybe more. Interesting was the "Made by Hobie Europe" sticker on the hulls, obviously they now have facilities to build carbon hulls. Also the rudder system was not standard Hobie style, ironically they didn't use carbon boards and rudders but standard GRPs. Opposite the Hobie Europe stand where the F18-Capricorns, a relative newcomer that seems to perform very well within the F18 field.

Saturday morning, race day. I set the alarm at 6am, had some breakfast, headed to the beach where everyone was preparing their boats for the start at 10am.

Damons Note: Recently a Hobie 18 was listed in our classified ads which claimed to be the "last Hobie 18 to ever leave the Hobie factory". I was intrigued by this claim and contacted the seller to find out how he ended up with such a special catamaran. Here is his story.

In the fall of 2004, I was looking for a new Hobie 14 Turbo. I did not know that Hobie Cat USA had discontinued selling the 14 in the states here some years ago. When I called Hobie Cat to inquire about the 14, I not only learned that the 14 had been discontinued, but was also told that Hobie had just announced the discontinuance of the 18 as well.

Here is a cautionary tale from a Lake Michigan catamaran sailor that explains the events leading to the demise of his Hobie 18 catamaran sailboat while sailing from Muskegon Harbor. Damon

I had been tracking the wind speed, from the office, at 12-16 knots steadily from the southwest all morning. Around noon, I was able to get a crew to head out to the lake at 2:00 PM - Friday July 25, 2003.

I should have known was not a good sign that on the way to the lake there was a major accident. An driver had crossed the center lane of the highway and hit another car, forcing us to detour and delay launching.

My Hobie 18 Magnum catamaran is kept mast up on a catamaran beach inside the Muskegon Harbor breakwater, so we quickly got it rigged and launched. The acceleration out of the harbor was GREAT! After clearing the lighthouse, that is where we ran into a slight problem.

Well, I crashed the Tri-Point race last Saturday. This race, part of the LandRover 3 races series, goes around Rig Gina & Anacapa Island to starboard and is organized by PierPoint Bay Yacht club in Ventura Harbor, CA. Race distance is ~45 miles. It's primarily a lead-bottom sailboat race, but they have an ORCA class for multihull sailboats. My Tornado catamaran doesn't qualify, but what the heck, it's a free ocean! Here's my report of the race... my first ever solo circumnavigation of Anacapa Island:

Multi's started last (about 11:25am) at the Mandalay power station buoy in 5-10 knots wind in fairly flat seas. Since I wasn't an official entry, I decided to let Afterburner (a 52 ft LOA catamaran racing machine), 2 of 10 (a 36 ft Rolland flat-out racing catamaran), a Reynolds 21 catamaran, and several Farrier and Corsair Trimarans have their way with the line.

It has been a tough month for me and yesterday's adventure was hopefully the peak of my excitement for the month.  At June's end I had a great trip in the Channel Islands National Park with my crew, Bill Mattson.  We sailed Whisk (my Mystere 6.0 catamaran) for four days, covering 140 nautical miles and visited a lot of places that we had not yet seen.  We hit a superb weather window that occurred as the "June Gloom" lifted and light to moderate winds blessed our days of sunshine and calm seas. July was off to a bang for me as I toured the West Coast by car and saw a spectacular fireworks show in Seattle.  On the way back home, I took a jet boat ride on the Rogue River in Grants Pass, Oregon.