Rehoboth Bay Sailing Association and Division 11, to host the 2003 Hobie North American Continental Championship September’s warm breezes will welcome the 2003 Hobie Cat North American Championship Regatta to Dewey Beach and the Rehoboth Bay Sailing Association. The event will kick off on September 26th with a three-day regatta to name the Women’s, Youth’s and Hobie 14 Champions.

The five day Hobie 16 Open event, beginning on Monday the 29th, will attract over 150 of the best catamaran sailors from the United States, Canada, the Caribbean and Mexico. Racers will compete for one of 10 slots to qualify for the 2004 Hobie 16 World Championship, to be held next May in Cancun Mexico.

Many catamaran sailors who move up to sailing catamaran sailboats after sailing dinghies will find they need to develop new techniques for tacking. Catamaran sailboats are not difficult to tack, but if you attempt to tack by just throwing the tiller over, you probably won't do well.

Dinghy sailors have refined a sailing technique called the "roll tack" which vastly improves speed coming out of the tack. A lot of catamaran sailors are not aware that you can roll tack your beachcat as well. Read more to find out how.

Note: This years race start is Saturday, Sept. 27.

The Round the Island Race is a 100 mile circumnavigation around Santa Rosa Island located in Northwest Florida. The event has a long and storied history stretching back over twenty three years. It begins in Fort Walton Beach and continues to Pensacola where the turn is made for the return trip back to Fort Walton Beach. Headquartered at the Gulf Islands National Seashore Park (known locally as Leeside Park) in Fort Walton the race site is a great arrangement of parking and white sandy beaches with clear shallow water.

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.