I will be posting reports in this thread as I receive them. If you have independent reports from other sources, please put those in this thread, as well.

Here is the latest press release from Bob Merrick:

PRESS RELEASE
May 1
The largest ever Hobie 16 World Sailing Championship
is only days away. Two hundred and forty three teams,
representing twenty-eight countries, are registered
for the event in Cancun Mexico. Five championships
will be determined between May 4 and the 14th sailed
in sixty-four brand new Hobie 16s provided by the
Hobie Cat Company. Racing for the Women, Master, Grand
Master and Youth World Championships will be contested
on the May 5,6 and 7. The Open World Championship will
start on the 8th with a two day qualifying round for
the semi-finals. The semi-finals will be sailed for
three days followed by a two-day finals with the top
56 teams.
www.HobieWorlds.com

The Numbers:
Open: 199 teams registered
Women: 18 teams
Master: 44
Grand Master: 13
Youth: 34
Note: registration had to be closed eight weeks prior
to the event
Some teams are registered for more than one event.

With around 315 teams, if I remember correct, the biggest event os far upon the invitation of the Sheikh of Dubai in 1994.

Fritz

Fritz
You are correct. It looks like I got some inaccurate information.
There were just over 300 teams at the 1996 Hobie 16 Worlds in Dubai.
Bob

Just got a correction on the original release:

From: Robert Merrick
Subject: CORRECTED Hobie 16 Worlds CORRECTED

The original release incorrectly referred to the 2004
World Championships as the biggest ever. The biggest
ever Hobie 16 World Sailing Championship was the 1996
event held in Dubai with just over 300 teams.

this is from the web site



The Final Countdown has begun!

From this moment on, we're transmitting from the Mayan Riviera.

64 boats are already on the beach. The Hobie Cat Factory Team has broken a world record by completely assembling a Hobie Cat 16 in 7.5 minutes. The best experts in the world, under the command of Doug Skidmore and Matt Miller work like Formula 1 pit mechanics.

The Reception Center is ready. The flags of more than 30 countries are now waving with the Mexican Caribbean Breeze. The multinational staff is working on the final details on every area: TV Production, journalism, photography and Telecommunications.

The Barceló Mayan Beach is one huge Hot Spot where hundreds of computers have been connected wirelessly with broadband speed.

Paul Ulibarri, the Principal Race Officer of the Mexico 2004 Coca Cola Hobie Worlds 16 declared exclusively to the International Press Center. "The quality and attention to detail that the Organizing Committee has put to this event is impressive" and he added: "without a doubt, this is the most organized Worlds I have ever witnessed."

Lori Monhey, Vice President of the IHCA and Coordinator of this World Championship is supervising the Reception Center, the Competitors Registration, the Regatta Office and the Judges' Room, the Communications Center and every detail of the facilities.

Mexico is ready. Competitors from over 30 countries will arrive tomorrow and on from different flights from all round the globe. The land of the Mayas grants the "flying cats".

And, friends, this is just the beginning.

Visit the Official Website www.hobieworlds.com for information to the minute.

Communication Center

Hobie Worlds Mexico 2004

Mayan Riviera

The Hobie 16 Worlds
Racing starts on Wednesday for the Women’s, Youth, Master and Grand Masters World Championship.
The Forecast is for partly cloudy skies with a high of 87oF with winds from the East Northeast at 12 mph.




Who to watch:

In the Women’s the defending World Champions from France Lauren Pelen and Lea Jeandott will be on the starting line ready to defend their title. To do that they will have to hold off their French teammate and winner of the ISAF World in the Hobie 16 class Marie Duvignac sailing with Pauline Thevenot.

Bronze medallist from the ISAF Worlds Susan Korzeniewsi sailing with Kathleen Tracy (USA) will be looking for her first World Championship victory.

Annie Nelson, sailing with Eliza Cleveland[my favorite H-16 sailor], will be making her return to the Hobie 16 class after winning the Women’s Worlds in 1995.

The youth helms who finished first second and third at the last World Championships will all be in Mexico for the 2004 Youth Worlds.

Defending Youth World Champion from Australia Robbie Loving will be sailing with Sarah Holland. Christophe Relaud (FRA) second in 2002 will be sailing with Alban Rossollin. Third in 2002 was Brice Pelen also from France he will be sailing with Loraine Beaumont.

The best hope for a good US finish most likely lies with Bret Sullivan and Samantha Simon from New Jersey.

In the Masters Kerli and Ali Corlett will be the team to beat as the highest placing returning team from the 2002 Masters Worlds. They finished third in 2002. To win they will have to beat New Zelands Rex Sellers and Bev Sellers. Rex Sellers is a Gold ('84) and Silver ('88) medallist in the Tornado class.

Bruce Tardrew and Sarah Turnbull (AUS) finished second in the Grand Masters in 2002 and will be in Mexico They will be challenged by Brazilian Luiz Gonzaga Machado, winner of the 200 Masters Championship sailing with Carlos Motta in the Grand Masters in Mexico

Results, pictures and comentary are up on the website.
http://www.hobieworlds.com/h16-2004/default.asp

Direct Link to results
Youth
Women
Masters

Press Release
For Imediate Release
May 5

Report from Eliza Cleveland (USA) crewing for Annie Nelson in the Womens Hobie 16 World Championship


Hello Race Fans!!!
This is my first report from the Women´s Hobie 16 Womens World Championship! I am down on the Riviera Maya -- about an hour south of Cancun on the Yucatan Peninsula. I got here two days ago and it is about 85 degrees during the day going down to about 70 at night. The hotel that is hosting the World Championship is huge with a huge pool, beach, spa, and I’m not sure what else. I have done absolutely
nothing except eat eat eat since my skipper and I weighed in only .7 kilos over the minimum weight.

Today was the first day of racing for the following World Championships: Youth, Masters, Grand Masters, and Womens. There are 60 boats provided by the Hobie Cat Company, and so there are two heats of sailing. In the morning the Masters and Grand Masters went out first while the Women and Youth waited on the beach.

Finally it was our turn, and the conditions had gotten more and more perfect. By the time we got out to the race course, it was blowing about 14 knots and there was some chop and waves.

We had an amazing first start. We were probably in fourth place and then rolled the boat in third place. But when we got to the windward mark, we HIT it (which is a huge no-no) and we had to do a "penalty turn" which meant that we had to turn 360 degrees on the water. It is a very very slow thing to do and means that all the boats that are close to you just zoom by you. We caught up with some boats down wind, but then on the next beat, we hit the mark again. Annie Nelson (my skipper) was trying to stay on the trapeze as we started rounding the mark, but she got tea-bagged and
flew off the back....thus forcing us to hit the mark again. So we did another 360! But we did catch up with some of the pack and ended up finishing in 7th place (out of 18 boats).

Race 2 the conditions were fairly similar except that the waves were getting a little bigger. Our start wasn’t the greatest, and then we actually hit another mark. Our rudder got caught on the line and kicked up slowing us way down. At this point we were second to last.

We tacked and went to the right side of the course where no one else had gone...we had nothing to lose... But it paid off and we rounded the windward mark in about 7th place. We kept going to the right side of the course on every beat, and eventually we ended up finishing in third place in that race.

We are in 5th place overall and the top American team.

We have two more days of racing.

Liza Cleveland

Great Video at the Worlds Web site. It takes a little time to load, but it's worth it.

Check it out May 5 Results & Reports

Video at bottom of page

that video was very well done... save the cheesey music

Day 2 Update from Eliza Cleveland, sailing with Annie Nelson, USA

Hello Race Fans!!!

The weather conditions were similar to yesterday. Fairly light winds (single trapping to start out) built in the afternoon to solid, screaming double trapping. The Women and Youth sailed in the morning, and the Masters and Grand Masters sailed in the afternoon. Since we raced in the morning, the breeze was lighter than yesterday.

Race 1: We had what could best be called, a third-row start. I'm not quite sure what happened, but during the last 20 seconds we got totally buried. Needless to say, we tacked as soon as possible on to port tack and had to duck a number of boats. So once again we headed right, which really did well by us yesterday -- however it was a huge gamble given that the wind conditions were so different in the morning than they were yesterday afternoon. The right side of the course was definitely the slow side yesterday for those groups sailing in the morning -- it was full of huge holes where there was no wind apparently.

So off we went, and the further we got, the better the wind got. By the time we were at the layline, we were double trapped. To our great surprise and delight, we rounded in 5th place. We had to go twice around the winward mark and had a downwind finish, where we ended up in 3rd place. Annie Nelson (my skipper) is a total master at surfing the waves downwind.

Race 2: This time we had an unbelievable start near the boat. We were first off the line, and decided to stay with the rest of the fleet in order to cover them. Only 4 boats went right this time (probably because they saw what it had done for us in the first race). We tacked out so that our lay line would be super easy to call, and what did we find at the mark were a couple of the people who had gone right rounding first. We were third around the mark at that point. This time the course was one where we had to round the windward mark three times and finish downwind. We kept our lead, and then passed the second-place boat during one of our runs. We were really close to Pam Noriega and her mom, but didn't get a chance to pass them before the finish. We came in second!

Presently we are in third place with Pam Noriega and her mom, Martha, winning with 6 points, Rosarito Martinez and Kamil Berrios from Puerto Rico are in second place with 8 points, and Annie Nelson and I are in third place also with 8 points. A tie is broken by determining who has had a better race, and the Puerto Ricans won the first race today, so that's why they are in second place.

The entire experience continues to be fantastic. The organization is wonderful, with huge numbers of helpers on the beach. All the top guys from the Hobie Cat Company are here and along with Alberto Ponce, (our Mexican host who as spent the last three years working on this regatta) the entire regatta is running smoothly, quickly, and on time.

The food continues to be astounding, and rumor has it that the mohitos are the best anyone has ever tasted. Every night we have videos that were taken during the races, and for the last two nights we've been given "chalk talks" by the current world champion, Gavin Colby who has completely blown most of us away with new ways of tuning the boats.

Tomorrow is our last day of racing, and the Women will most likely sail in the afternoon when it promises to blow once again.

Liza Cleveland

For results, pictures, video and commentary go to the Hobie Worlds web site:
http://www.hobieworlds.com/h16-2004/default.asp

Friday:
Cloudy skies. High 88F. Winds E at 15 to 25 mph.

I'd like to know more about these so called "new ways" of tuning the boats.

I'm not in Mexico until Saturday but Liza has promised to take good notes.

Over the Aussie summer, word has it that Gavin (already damn fast on a 16) found another gear - I'd like to hear about it, too. He's definitely got the credentials and the credibility to back up any tuning he may be trying. He's a world champion who may be about to repeat. As far as I'm concerned, he sailing's E.F. Hutton.

And a really nice guy. We had him in Ireland in March 2003 for a training session, and then in August we were de-rigging beside him at the UK Nationals. He chatted away and offered advice on our rigging etc., even though we were sailing different classes. A great ambassador for all sailing.

I just spoke to Liza
She and Annie had a rough day today that included a capsize. It looks like the Mexicans, Pamela and Martha Noriega have won the Womens Wolrds (not 100% on that).

Hello Race Fans!!!
I am sending this report a day late because we did not find out the results of the regatta until late last night because there were a number of protests that had to be heard by the Protest Committee.

The day was going to be a challenging one. Arriving on the beach at 8:30 to help the Brazilian Grand Master team with whom we were switching off boats, the wind was alread blowing hard. It was cloudy, and the wind was still from the NE with a possibility of going more easterly as the day progressed.

The Masters and Grand Master teams left the beach, and I went back to the hotel to eat more food. Because Annie and I were only .7 kilos over minimum weight, there was still a possibility of another weigh-in. Which reminds me, at the end of our last race on Day 1, we hit the beach and immediately a gentleman from the Race Jury came up and asked that we please get weighed again. We had promised ourselves to be sure to drink a bottle of water each on the way back to the beach, but we forgot, and once you hit the beach, if they think you might be underweight, you get weighed immediately. If it turns out that you are underweight, all your races for that day are disqualified. So we went over to the high-tech scale, stripped down to our bathingsuits, and got weighed. Luckily we had gained a kilo...as I mentioned, we´ve been trying to eat as much as possible!

Race 1: After the somewhat chaotic exodus from the beach (due to the fact that they blow a horn and all of a sudden 60 boats want to leave out of a fairly small stretch of beach that is not near reefs), we headed out to the race course. Suddenly I was experiencing conditions heretofore never experienced by yours truly. The waves were massive. The wind was blowing about 17 knots which is a decent double-trapping breeze, but the waves made just staying on the boat difficult. At times when you are out on the trapeze, the boat would fly over a wave and both your feet would leave the boat!

Our start was good, and about half-way down the course we headed right which was windier the other two days. It was definately a crazier place to be with huge waves coming at all angles due to a very strong current running north. At the windward mark I believe we rounded in 5th place. The boat that actually won that race was about 100 feet in front of us. Downwind was a rollercoaster ride. The key is to try and surf the waves while making sure that you don´t dig in your bows which would result in the boat pitchpolling Annie is very experienced at surfing the waves on a Hobie, and it was an amazing learning experience for me. What a wild ride downwind!

At the gates we rounded the left one and headed up the right side of the course to big wind and big waves. Annie´s rudder did not go down all the way after the rounding (it is normal to raise your windward rudder going downwind) and so she had to get off the trapeze to get back onto the boat to fix it. Just as she was going in, a wave came and knocked her completely off the boat, so she was dragging behind it! At that point we started capsizing, and so I unhooked my trapeze line (so I wouldn´t get pulled under the boat if it turtled) and swam out of the way as the boat came down over me. We both swam to the other side of the boat to get up on the hulls so it wouldn´t turtle and so we could right it. Luckily with a lot of wind that is pretty easy to do if you have the mast pointing just off the wind. So it only took about 4 or 5 minutes to get sailing again, but we knew that was a lost race for us. But we caught a lot
of the fleet and ended up 7th in that race. A number of boats got out to the race course and simply decided not to race in those conditions.

Race 2: We had a less-than-perfect start, but not horrible, and all of a sudden the team from New Caladonia was port-tacking the entire fleet. All of a sudden there was mayhem, and people were screaming ¨starboard¨ Then people started yelling ¨Protest¨. I really thought someone was going to be hurt -- it was an incredibly crazy thing to do with the crazy wave-wind conditions we were sailing in.

But the rest of that race was uneventful and we finished in 5th place.

We sailied six races over the three days, and thus we were allowed to throw out our worst race. After throwing out one of our 7s, we finished the regatta in 6th place. There was an awards banquet last night, and the award went to the first 6 place finishers, so I have a wonderful plaque with a Mayan sculpture on it. I am thrilled!

My hands and feet are completely chewed up with blisters and cuts, but I have two days off until the Open World Championship begins on Monday. The cuts will certainly not heal, but my skipper/boyfriend, Bob Merrick is bringing me some new sailing gloves (which are actually gardening gloves apparently that all the Tornado sailors (I think) use. I will have to completely tape my hands and feet so that nothing gets worse.

I wish I could explain to you the comradrie between all the many countries who are here and the passion which they all feel for catamaran sailing. It is amazing.

Liza Cleveland

We are through the Women’s, Jrs, Masters and the Grand Masters events... and one day of the Championship. We completed 3 races today with winds in the low teens. There was a scare before the first race with a storm cell and some lightning. All boats were sent back to the beach. It was a wild few minutes with 60 boats trying for any available space as they came in all at one time from the start area. The beach team and other sailing teams on the beach assisted and we were able to get all on the beach with no damage. THAT is a good thing for the beach team as any damaged boats have to be repaired of replaced before the next off the beach is called. We had 3 races and a few collisions during the day including one good port starboard... that boat was holed, but will be ready to go in the morning. We now have 121 teams in the semi finals as an error allowed too many to be qualified. He is a happy man as Doug Skidmore convinced us to allow the 61st boat into the event. This is an issue as we have only 3 spare boats now. YIKES!

It really is a great event. I wish you all could be here!

Sorry not so many reports from me... I am and have been very busy!