I have just read the editorial that Rick wrote in Catsailor magazine... that certainly explains the bitter tone in many of the posts on this subject.

I know Rick is very proud of the growth of the IWCA. Remember though, Hobie Cat also put in a large amount of effort and expense to provide charter boats and staff for those early events. This is how the fleet down in Key Largo was created. In reality, the growth of our Hobie Wave sales had enabled this... IWCA racing was not responsible for our sales growth by any means. As example, when racing was big for Hobie back in the 80's it amounted to less than 10% of its boat sales... racing is a far smaller percentage of sales these days. Recreation was and is what sells.

To be clear... Our Director of Marketing, Dan Mangus is not the evil doer here. His entire job at Hobie Cat is to promote and protect Hobie, its trademarks and the decades of work we have done to create Hobie products, Hobie Sailing and the life style World Wide.

What I understand that happened... The NOR for the event was written with a comment that IWCA rules would be used for Wave racing. This was the first mistake. This is a Hobie Class North Americans... a Major Hobie event. The IHCA has Wave Class rules. This was spotted by David Brookes / ICHA Director. This was seen as an issue and a bad precedent to be set at a Major Hobie event. To try and resolve the issue, a group of HCA and HCC people discussed the subject and proposed to have the racing governed by IHCA Wave rules and that an exception would be used to allow IWCA conforming boats race this event. This is where Dan and Hobie Cat left the discussion. A very reasonable compromise. Where this was derailed after that, I don't really know. Maybe someone will explain that to us here.

Further... I suspect many if not most IWCA sailors, who would have come, would not have traveled the thousands of miles West with their own boats anyway... so why not promote the use of the factory provided charter boats? I suppose... that would be seen as "giving in" to the factory and HCA? I really don't get it. They should come and sail.