Aloha Steve! (and anyone else who thinks there are no beach cats on Kauai...)

I have a cat I bought a couple years ago and finally got around to fixing up last summer and fall. It's a 1982 Prindle 16, and I think somewhere along the way I got addicted to buying parts for it--I'm still doing upgrades. Has many new components already and should probably sail, well... like the wind. If I knew what I was doing, that is.

Some rental cats and a few private ones are pulled up on Kalapaki Beach in front of the Marriott just about year-round, and more are kept on the beach at Hanalei Bay during the summer half of the year. I ran into a couple guys up at Hanalei last fall who seemed excited to see my Prindle and said I need to come up and join their "North Shore Yacht Club" this summer. Sounds like just an informal group of people who sail together.

I talked to another guy up there when I saw he had a set of Cat Trax sticking out of his pickup bed. Same story--lots of cats up there in the summer, people sail together, etc.

Also, boats do come up for sale around here, sometimes fixer-uppers, sometimes ready to sail. Mine was the former, is now the latter. Might want to sell it later, but not yet.

For fixer-uppers, I've found plenty of parts online, and if you can get stuff sent USPS priority mail, parts shipping to Kauai isn't too expensive. Also probably a bunch of spare parts available among the local cat sailors, maybe swapped or sold word-of-mouth. I have a pile of them I just need to take pictures of and post to Craigslist.

Sounds like you know what you're doing sailing-wise. I am a real novice and might be willing to trade some sailing for some hands-on lessons. I think my mind is still pretty young, but my body is not. It's been beaten up and broken, bloated from too many years (and beers, no doubt) as well as too much work in front of a computer. I look just like my avatar, so I'll need to pace myself as I work my way back into reasonable shape.

What was that you said about no racing on Kauai? A friend who lives on Grand Traverse Bay in Michigan once told me that the definition of a sailboat race is whenever more than one boat is on the water. As I start my learning-to-sail adventure, that's the theory I'm going with. (Maybe I should quote Geoff instead of Steve Dallas...)

Aloha & Out,
Dave, Owner of "Bill the (1982 Prindle 16) Cat"