Fred, your insights and ideas are very thought-provoking. It had never occurred to me that a whole generation of us are still stuck in the 1980's, including the people who run the Hobie Class Association and the people who run the Hobie Cat Company.

And you're right, nothing has changed in the last 20 years. The boats look boring, the sails look boring. We need attention-getting graphics on the hulls, but most of all on the sails, because those are our billboards.

And putting catamarans in malls, which is where all the kids hang out, is a brilliant idea. In fact, you could put a cat in a pool of water, like we did for a boat show in Cleveland back in the early 1960's, so people could actually see what it feels like on the boat when it's floating, and so people could try trapezing.

Maybe tie the boat in the pond fore and aft so it can't go anywhere and have a big fan to make wind, so when the sails are sheeted in, it actually will fly a hull. (And somebody controlling the fan so the boat doesn't capsize, of course.)

This is a very exciting idea. Malls. Why hasn't anybody thought of this before? Forget the boat shows.