OK, here’s the report from the Strictly Sail Show in Chicago this weekend, as well as our HCA Division 10 meeting on Saturday night:

First the show – WOW! HCA Division 10 had a display with John Bauldry’s Tiger, a projector running Hobie Worlds / Nationals videos and all kinds of info to hand out. Hedlund Marine (the local Hobie dealer) had a huge separate area with a Getaway, Bravo, kayaks and a bunch of monohulls along with lots of apparel and other goodies.

I was there all day Saturday and by the end of the day (8:00 PM), I was hoarse from talking to the hundreds of people that stopped by. Check out the photo – see the crowd in front of the Tiger in the foreground? That was about half the typical number of people that were hanging around at any given time. We had over 100 people interested in joining Hobie Fleets give us their contact information!



Meanwhile, over at the dealer’s area, they sold a bunch of Hobie 16’s – two in one hour Saturday afternoon. While we weren’t trying to sell boats at our booth, we think we’ll be responsible for selling at least 4 Tigers. All in all, an extremely successful outing. It far exceeded our expectations!

As for the HCA Division 10 meeting Saturday night, we had about 35 people from the three most active Hobie Fleets in the Division (276 – Detroit, 519 – Kalamazoo, and 123 – Carlyle, IL). Ruth Triglia from Hobie Cat was there, as were the owners of Hedlund Marine. IHCA Vice President Lori Mohney (a member of Hobie Fleet 519) was there as well.

The focus of the meeting was on fleet building and looking towards the future since that is what is most important to us as a Hobie Class Association Division. The future of Hobie Fleets is not racing, but the social and fun aspects of getting together with people that own Hobie Cats. Kind of like a Corvette Car Club. (OK, maybe it’s a VW Beetle Club, for those of you who still consider us “Slowbies”).

There was some discussion of the “edict” at the meeting but most of us consider it a non-issue. After all, we’re rebuilding HCA Division 10 from scratch. We’ll continue to sail with our X-boat friends at regattas hosted by CRAM, CRAW, OCRA and other sailing associations. We don’t have any plans to host a regatta as a Hobie Division yet, because we’re too geographically dispersed. Maybe next year. We’ll worry about it when the time comes. We have to walk before we can run.

At the conclusion of the meeting, both Ruth and Lori answered questions about a variety of topics, from the “edict” to the decision to stop production of the Hobie 17 and 18. It was a lively discussion, but most people understood that the “edict” is really an administrative change. We’re also looking forward to the support that Hobie Cat Co. has promised (whatever that might end up being). We left the meeting on a high positive note – I haven’t seen so many people geeked about Hobie sailing in a long time.

Everybody agrees that the communication of the “edict” was not handled as well as it could have been. I received a personal apology from Rich McVeigh about that, and I’ve gotten over it. I suggest everybody else just take a deep breath and get over it as well. There are a lot of details to be worked through and the HCA officers are on it. I know people want to know what’s going to happen RIGHT NOW, but they are just going to have to be patient. Nobody that works on this stuff gets paid to do it and we all have commitments (like work) that come before sailing politics.

I, for one, refuse to roll around in the mud with those slinging it at the various players working on this. I refuse to blow this out of proportion like so many have, including, IMHO, the host of this forum (just look at the misleading title of this thread). I will be patient, I will keep my head on straight and look toward the future without judging or second guessing decisions made in the past by others in what they consider to be the best interests of my class. I will make my opinions known and I won’t stamp my feet and cry when I don’t get my way.

It's time to move on.