HA Ha Ha !!!
The last Hobie race i witnessed at Lake Mohave ; maybe 50+
cats and it was blowing 30+ on the water ...
Almost Everyone sat on shore with there cats rigged , less
there sails, and on there beach-wheels.
YEP -- they all watched me & a buddy of mine, while we were on our kite boards.
Only person out with a cat, was a rather
talented Dude, with his Daughter on a Hobie-18 ; they were
having an Absolute BLAST !!!
I was there, too. That would have been Rex Mitchell - and he admitted afterward it was one of the stupidest things he had ever done. Nearly broke his boat - and his daughter.
After witnessing that ; I Never had any desire to go
racing with the Hobie crowd (.)
SO to answer your question : " did anyone ever win a major Hobie race with a reefed sail"?
That would be probably NO, because the field would be Too
scared to go sailing in a 30+ ; so they would Call the race!
HAHA !!!
We weren't scared - neither the Hobie 18s nor the Hobie 17s that were there have any provision for reefing. We had just finished a day of five races in 20+ kts and we were beat. There were multiple collisions in the 18s and one crew had to be evacuated to Las Vegas for a concussion.
Personally, I needed to win four races in order to get from 2nd to 1st in the 17s that last day, and I really couldn't see myself (or my boat) making it through 4 races in 30+ kt winds (with gusts into the 40s). The race committee didn't think they would survive either, so they called it off.
This isn't a game of "who's got the biggest d**k" - it's supposed to be fun - and it's not fun over 25 kts steady. You can do your little superiority dance all you want, but I got my boat back in one piece from that event, and I couldn't care less what you were doing that day. I was having more fun on shore than I would have on the water, and that's what matters to me.