Category: Reporting

9/18/04 Final Results, Hobie 16 North Americans Mexicans Armando Noriega and Roderigo Achach are the new Hobie 16 North American Champions. Noriega is a Pan-Am Games silver medallist in the Hobie 16 but the title of North American Champion is a first for him and for Achach. The team dominated the seventy-one catamaran fleet, on Lake Oneida in Syracuse NY, finishing twenty two points ahead of the second place team, and 2004 Alter Cup Champions, Mike Montague and Cathy Ward from California. Defending Champions Paul and Mary Ann Hess finished fourth.

The regatta came to an anticlimactic end on Friday with only one race started in winds just above the class minimum wind strength of five knots. The conditions where light and shifty for most of the week with the exception of Tuesday when the winds topped out at about fifteen knots.

Top Five:

1. Armando Noriega and Roderigo Achach
2. Mike Monntague and Cathy Ward
3. Bob Merrick and Eliza Cleveland
4. Paul Hess and Mary Ann Hess
5. Wall Myers and Tyler Myers

Full results and pictures are on the event website at www.HobieNAC.com .

Here's a report from the scene at the Hobie Worlds in Cancun Mexico written by Liza Cleveland, who is crewing in both womens and open races.

The day was going to be a challenging one. Arriving on the beach at 8:30 to help the Brazilian Grand Master team with whom we were switching off boats, the wind was alread blowing hard. It was cloudy, and the wind was still from the NE with a possibility of going more easterly as the day progressed.

The Masters and Grand Master teams left the beach, and I went back to the hotel to eat more food. Because Annie and I were only .7 kilos over minimum weight, there was still a possibility of another weigh-in. Which reminds me, at the end of our last race on Day 1, we hit the beach and immediately a gentleman from the Race Jury came up and asked that we please get weighed again. We had promised ourselves to be sure to drink a bottle of water each on the way back to the beach, but we forgot, and once you hit the beach, if they think you might be underweight, you get weighed immediately. If it turns out that you are underweight, all your races for that day are disqualified. So we went over to the high-tech scale, stripped down to our bathingsuits, and got weighed. Luckily we had gained a kilo...as I mentioned, we´ve been trying to eat as much as possible!

Race 1: After the somewhat chaotic exodus from the beach (due to the fact that they blow a horn and all of a sudden 60 boats want to leave out of a fairly small stretch of beach that is not near reefs), we headed out to the race course. Suddenly I was experiencing conditions heretofore never experienced by yours truly. The waves were massive. The wind was blowing about 17 knots which is a decent double-trapping breeze, but the waves made just staying on the boat difficult. At times when you are out on the trapeze, the boat would fly over a wave and both your feet would leave the boat!

May 6, 2004 - Performance Catamarans, Inc. To Build The Nacra A2

Santa Ana, California -- Today, Performance Catamarans announced the introduction of the new International A-Class catamaran. Teaming up with the well-known design team of Morrelli & Melvin and co-designer Jeremy Laundergan, Performance will manufacture the Nacra A2, their first entry into the carbon catamaran market.

The International A-Class Catamaran is a high-performance ³box rule² International Sailing Federation design specification dictating an 18-foot long, 7-1/2 foot wide catamaran with 150 square feet of sail area and a minimum weight of 165 pounds.

The Hobie 16 Worlds: Racing starts on Wednesday for the Women's, Youth, Master and Grand Masters World Championship. The Forecast is for partly cloudy skies with a high of 87oF with winds from the East Northeast at 12 mph.

Who to watch: In the Women's the defending World Champions from France Lauren Pelen and Lea Jeandott will be on the starting line ready to defend their title. To do that they will have to hold off their French teammate and winner of the ISAF World in the Hobie 16 class Marie Duvignac sailing with Pauline Thevenot.

Bronze medallist from the ISAF Worlds Susan Korzeniewsi sailing with Kathleen Tracy (USA) will be looking for her first World Championship victory.

Annie Nelson, sailing with Eliza Cleveland, will be making her return to the Hobie 16 class after winning the Women's Worlds in 1995.

The Hobie 16 World Championship is only days away. Two hundred and forty one teams, representing twenty-eight countries, are registered for the event in Cancun, Mexico. Five championships will be determined between May 4th and May 14th sailed in sixty-four brand new Hobie 16s provided by the Hobie Cat Company. Racing for the Women, Master, Grand Master and Youth World Championships will be contested on May 5, 6, and 7. The Open World Championship will start on the 8th with a two day qualifying round for the semi-finals. The semi-finals will be sailed for three days followed by two-day finals with the top 56 teams. www.HobieWorlds.com