Hi Robi

You can count me as one who loves to sail but has little interest in racing.
After dealing with the competitiveness in just about every aspect of life, I want to have fun on the water. I try to do my boating (both sail and power) on the week days whenever possible because it allows me to interact with nature not more people.

I think catamaran sailing, and sailing in general for that matter, is not more popular because of several things. 1) It takes effort to learn, and a lot of people today are living in fast forward…they would rather jump on a PWC, turn the key and get instant gratification.
2) Most of the new cats + trailer+ beach wheels are 15- 20K. That is a lot of money to put into a toy unless pretty much all you do is sail, or you have a large disposable income. A few months ago I Spent 20K on a brand new powerboat instead of a new cat…why? Because it affords me many options, Cruising, Fishing (inshore and offshore, my wife’s favorite past time), it will pull a skier or water toy, etc. With the new 4 stroke technology you can hardly tell if the motor is running it’s so quite, and the 2 cycle stink is gone too.
3) Most new cats are either low tech/low performance roto-mold types or high dollar and race oriented. Why should someone spend 15 to 20K for a new boat when they can pick up a cat in good condition from the dead boat society for 20-30% of the cost of a new one? Some of these boats are fast enough to finish just minuets behind some of the latest and greatest…some of these old dogs still win on occasion against the best of the new (Bill & Eric Roberts on an old beat Supercat 20 for instance). Most of these owners I would suspect love to sail as much as anyone, they just view sailing as one aspect of their lives rather than the driving force in their recreational life. If I am not racing…how much more fun would I have by sailing a F18 for $15,000 + over my 1992 Supercat 17 with an upgraded sail plan? If I spend 5 times as much is that going to give me 5 times the fun when free sailing? Don’t think so…

As far as the F-16’s…I am here to say I have seen the Blade F16 in the flesh and it is one beautiful design (Awesome job Phil) and Vectorworks does it proud with outstanding build quality. It does exist…as well as the Taipan 4.9, I have seen a couple of those too. They are real!...and real nice!

I believe it all comes down to personality types…some are the happiest when they are in the front of a 100 boat fleet…others are the happiest when they are the only boat on the water. Which is better depends on who you ask.

From a business standpoint the Catamaran industry as a whole, is as clueless as it gets. You have a whole industry basically ignoring the general population to focus on what boils down to a select handful of racing enthusiast. Put this in perspective, out of the Hundreds of Millions of people on the planet how many thousands actually race catamarans on a regular basis?…It’s like if Ford and Chevy concentrated all their energy on NASCAR and ignored the millions of people who drive cars everyday for general transportation. And they wonder why they barely stay in business. Duh!

Regards,
Bob