Jake,
The 12,000-member Hobie figure came from a Sailing World survey back in about 1998 where class associations were supposed to report their actual paid membership figures. Some class associations did that. Some did not. Instead, some figures were reported by manufacturers based upon numbers of boats they had sold. And in the case of the Hobie Class, I don't know whether it was reported by the class or by the factory, but the 12,000 figure obviously was an old figure based upon the circulation claimed by the Hobie Hotline before it went out of business. It was not related to the actual number of members of the class association at the time of the survey.

As a result of the various ways in which "memberships" were reported, the whole survey was totally skewed. In the case of catamarans, it showed us having a much bigger piece of the graphic "pie" than we actually had.

It made us look really good, but it was not accurate in terms of the survey question.