Wendy:

I think they have decided a 16 would be best for you. My concern is righting it. Either get a righting bag or a righting pole system. I would go with Rick White's righting system as it would be a lot easier for you to use. Go out and have fun. Read what you can and just enjoy the sport. Learning and experience will just take time on the water.

Doug

Pete, relax, we have a number of women skippers that are boat owners around here. I have seen many of them step the mast, unload a boat, get it on wheels and down to the beach while barely touching the boat. It's magic(a nice smile and a cooler of cold ones helps to)

I'll bet!

Okay, I'm going to finally chime in here. If you want a novice boat that you, as a woman, can easily and safely sail by yourself and right it yourself and can raise the mast yourself and get it in and out of the water yourself, get a used Hobie Wave and a trailer and a set of beach wheels. And then if you quickly outgrow the boat and want to move up, give me a call, because we are always looking for used Waves to grow our fleets in Ohio and Florida.

Waves hold their value well and are in great demand for us old people and women and kids that are more interested in very tight one-design racing than flat-out speed. (None of us are novices; most of us are veteran racing sailors that are just going back to basics and also getting more women involved again.)
305-451-3287
mary@catsailor.com

My advice would be to find yourself another boat owner who is without a crew and spend your first years learning to sail catamarans like that.

Most inexpensive, you'll learn faster, more enjoyable and I have my doubts about any catamaran out there with your 128 lbs body weight. That with exception of the Hobie wave and maybe mystere 4.3.

My (racing) crew is also of that weight and in this way I speak from experience. She is downright fanatical but even my boat of 240 lbs all up weight is alot for her.

I would do some boat hopping first before buying yourself one. That way you could find out what works for you.

Wouter

as my crew says- the best boat is your buddy's boat. He sails more than I do and he has never owned a boat.

I was thinking of the same thing as Wouter. Go crew for a year or so, before you buy. You'll figure out what you like in a boat, and what you dont like. Owning a boat is a lot of work and picking the wrong boat is a painful experience.

Whats the old saying?

The only thing better than owning a boat is having a close friend who owns a boat.

Good crew is usually in short supply - at least thats been my experience.

If you learn how to crew and make a bunch of connections with people that need crew it will give you a chance to try out new boats before you buy one.

Bill

CAN I GET AN AMEN!!!!!!

[/quote] Whats the old saying?

The only thing better than owning a boat is having a close friend who owns a boat.

Good crew is usually in short supply - at least thats been my experience.

If you learn how to crew and make a bunch of connections with people that need crew it will give you a chance to try out new boats before you buy one.

Bill [/quote]

yep- I'm always looking for crew who want to learn

Yes.

Gone with the Wind in Atlanta, GA May 6-7
Virginia Beach Regatta May 13-14
Tommy Whiteside Memorial in Columbia, SC May 20-21

http://www.emsa-sailing.org/schedule_2006.htm

I have heard some sound advice. I won't forget it. I think I will learn faster if I have a boat of my own. I could realistically be on the water two days on a bad week if I had one. The problem with that is I will most likely be alone.
However, I am patient. I know you realize that I am a woman and find that hard to believe but it is true.
I will take my time looking and learning.

Ok, maybe I missed a few things, but it seems everybody has stated suggesting boats without a few key questions up front.

1 - What is you intended use for the boat you're looking for? Are you simply wanting to learn how to sail a cat at this point with the idea of eventually going racing, or do you want to jump into racing as soon as you can? In other words what is your perceived timetable for getting into racing if you want to race? Or, do you really want to race at all?

2 - Are looking for a crewed (2-person) boat, or are you looking for something that you can easily handle/race on your own, maybe taking an occasional passenger along for a ride? Do you have access to readily available and willing crew?

3 - If you want to race, do you have an opinion on whether you want to go one-design (everybody on the same boat, first over the line wins) or run-what-you-brung (handicap, math decides winner, not all the boats the same)?

4 - You're saving money for the purchase, but how much do you envision having available to get started?

The questions may be many, but they are designed to figure out a good match. For instance, if you will be sailing alone, won't be racing just yet, maybe a Wave is the best way to start. If you want to race now and it will only be you sailing/racing you'll need to find a singlehand class, Hobie-16 is not that. If you don't mind making payments and want to jump right in, then options change again.

You can get into the boats for fairly cheap up front, but you may end spending a lot to get the boat where you want for racing. Again, answers to the above questions may help you decide which way to go.

Take a shot at answering the questions, let us know the answers, and then we can see if the recommendations fit!

Welcome to the club!

Ok, I've been following this thread for a while. Here is my suggestion. Buy a Hobie Wave to keep locally and play on. Then on weekends offer to crew for people on whatever they will take you on to learn different boats. You have the best of both worlds this way.

Do not buy an H16 to sail by yourself. H16's are impossible at your size to get in and out of the water without help. Also I would say even with a righting bag that you probably couldn't right the boat by yourself. Plus the boat is really to powerful to sail at your size by yourself.

With a Wave you will learn the basics of sailing. By crewing for people you will learn the finer points.

Good Luck,
Mike Hill
www.stlouiscats.com

Good, I get to say it again without being rude!

You weigh 128 lbs.

Hi Sunny,

Keith's advice is the best I've heard so far. Try different boats and see what you like. I'll offer my story and observations:

My first boat was an H16, but I don't think that is the best first boat around. I'd rather suggest a Prindle 16, a Wave, or a Mystere 4.3, and here's why: H16 is overpowered and under-bow-volumed. H16's not a hard boat to sail, but it is a hard boat to sail well. The Prindle can be found used cheap and is a better beginner platform with its greater bow volume. At your light weight you can carry crew with you or go singlehand on it, for it's not as over-canvassed as the H16. You can still race, there's plenty of open class racing about, but that's prolly not your main usage anyway, right?

A lightweight girl (ca. 130lb) can singlehand right an H16, it's more of a technique than brute force. I've seen it done by an excellent girl sailor named Missy Allen. She righted her H16 in a squall something like 5 times, because the wind was blowing such that the boat would go on over before she could get aboard. Righting generally is not easy, but once you get the hang, it's technique as much as anything.

The Wave is fun, and yes there's pure-D 'racing' but if you decide you like cat sailing, you may feel that you want more boat sooner. Course you could say the same thing about the P16, but it would take a bit longer.

Now that little Mystere... well, it's gotta chute, there is some class racing going on, and it's quite the versatile little craft. While you're learning you could run it without the chute and then as your skill develops you can hang the laundry. Little as you are, you can singlehand it and be competitive, quite competitive in fact.

Like I said, my first boat was an H16 and it was ok, but then I discovered other boats and now I have an 18 Square NACRA catamaran. Actually, you could do worse for beginner boats than the Sq because they're broad-beamed and relatively simple, but really it's not meant to be a starter boat.

TRY BEFORE YOU BUY, that's the best advice there is.

sea ya
tami

Moving any of the boats mentioned is not about pure strength. The wave weighs 245lbs. How many people can lift that? It's technique. There are easy step systems for masts. Trailers have rollers. Roll the boat on the wheels and your off.
Sunny has stated she is in shape, has a white water kayak background and is determined. She's probably stronger than half the guys telling her what she can't do.
The wave is great if sailed in a group like Rick and Mary have, but the first time sailing with other boats and they go by like your tied to a tree will be no fun.
Don't spend all summer analizing this to death. Go get a boat(be safe) and have some fun. An inexpensive used boat will be easy to resell.
Our fleet has 8-10 women skippers(not big girls) that can single hand a H16. I have been getting beat on the race course by some of them for a while now.
attached: My favorite (very little)girl skipper

So would you tell a 128-pound woman, who is a novice, to get a Hobie 16 and go out sailing by herself, single-handing, while she is learning how to sail and in an environment where there are not other sailors around?

I don't think so.

Alright, lets do it your way :

It requires a whole lot more "technique" to handle a 340 lbs boat then say a 240 lbs boat. Same goes for righting such a boat in anything but a squall where the boat is thumbling along across the watersurface quite nicely already; that is without human interverence.

The required "technique" rises exponentially with reduced windspeeds. At 15 knots or less the required level of "technique" can easily be such that it is practically impossible for a 128 lbs person to ever attain; no matter how many hours of practising on the water.

The required level of "righting technique" also shows a remarkable correlation with amassed body weight. For some weird reason heavier persons can make due with less "technique" then lighter persons. It has recently been discovered that a good portion of capsizes in sub-squal-like conditions by lightweight persons ended in the observation that these crews are still insufficiently skilled in their righting technique despite plenty of warnings to that effect in the past.

Does everybody agree with this way of wording things ?

Good,

Wouter

(things used to be easier when politically correctness didn't require us to use replace words like "strength" and "weight" by less discriminatory identifiers such as "technique")

Okay, we are going to have to have a righting contest in light air between an expert lightweight like Randy Smyth (TECHNIQUE) versus a novice heavyweight like Barry Bonds (WEIGHT/STRENGTH), to determine which works best.

#1. My first objective is to learn... not to race. What I liked most about kayaking was doing something difficult well. I liked to push myself to refine my 'art'. I like to take something challenging and work it until it 'looks' easy. Most of that is very personal and has little to do with anyone else on the water. I think that at some point, competition is the best way to personally develop in your sport. Racing is a natural progression but not a goal.

#2 I want to be able to have crew but I DO NOT want to have to depend on it. I have always chosen sports that were solo. (Biking, rollerblading, kayaking) That way, I can just grab my gear and go.

#3 One design

#4 Around $2,000 for just the boat. I expect to have to spend that much again for trailer, wheels, gear and so forth. That will still leave me a bit in the bank to fix/upgrade stuff if I need to. So $5,000