I first tried a cat when I was 16 or 17 in the south of France, riding crew with a member of my club who needed someone with him to go out on a windy day. I was a capable dinghy (420, 470, X4) sailor, but the speed of the H16 bluffed me. It took me another 10 years to finally decide to buy my own boat, and got a $700 Hobie 16. I've always been a recreational dinghy/cat sailor, I never took part in any race, I just had fun screaming on the wire... I sailed my 16 mostly alone on a reservoir, but I got in touch with some other sailors in the SF bay area and done a lot of outing in the bay and in Santa Cruz with crews (Wow! Surf!).

I came back to Europe so sold the H16 and stopped sailing for a while. Last year the bug started to bite again so I looked around, found a sailing club on a reservoir not to far from my home, with a neglected 20yo Nacra 5.2 sitting on the lot. I bought it cheap, and won the summer wednesday evening club championship series with it (Mostly because the other cats neglected to show up regularly. Of the 19 cats which participated only 7 ran enough races to qualify, and as I was the only one with no DNC I won <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />. I'm slow upwind, really slow downwind, can't get the thing back up when I capsize it, panic when there is too much wind, but hey, I have fun...

I'd like to get something a little more recent, a F16 would suit me fine, but I sail on the cheap, so anything expensive is a big nono. The Nacra will do for now, until I could find a F16 in my price range (and now Wayne is going to tell me that I can have his Stealth for not too much money and he will give me another ride, and then tell me I should get it...)