The Hobie 16 vs Prindle 16 catfight was pretty much over when I started racing with Hobie 16's as the clear survivor but obviously... the culture split occurred very early in beach cat history and to HA... the first Hobie edict was to dictate that each class go their own way.
So, instead of catamaran sailor... you were a hobie, or prindle sailor.


The two cultures were really different. It's interesting that the Prindle sailors seemed to march up the performance ladder while the Hobie 16 sailors only seemed to march up to the Hobie 18 and a lot of them never moved up at all.

The new Hobie 20 generated a lot of giggles among the performance oriented sailors with it's name... the Miracle 20.... ie it took a miracle to get the 16 and 18 sailors to move up to a performance boat and this boat appeared well after the peak of cat racing and long after HA's retirement. The cultures started to merge with 20 and then the F18's really forced the merge the culture issue.

These culture differences were remarkable and it's interesting to see that they were rooted in HA's view of the way things should work and one of his early decisions.