New Hobie Kayak / Trimaran

One of the neatest features... aside from the MirageDrive of course.

Available after September 1st.

Will open sails be allowed at the Mirage Nationals?

Hey Matt,

I don't want to be a pain but I am wondering where Hobie US is going.
It seems you have abandoned any hope to represent the cream of beach cats, I am talking about F18s, F20s, Acats etc...
I agree that there is certainly a place for the regular basic leisure sailor, but what about us?
All new racing designs come now from Hobie Europe and Hobie US seems to not even try to built fiberglass hightech boats (not even talking about designing them).

This is a matter of image. Just look at the Hobie catalog: a lot of Tiger pictures but not one Tiger part in it! Looks bad to me as a Tiger owner.

What are your plans? What is going on? This situation is weird and I am wondering if beside making money with polyetylene boats Hobie US is still actually interested by the catamaran scene which is by the way picking up big time world wide.

Well, honestly, making money has to be a companies first priority, but interested in catamarans? Certainly.

People tend to forget that we are an international business with partners. Hobie Cat has three production facilities around the World right now. Hobie Cat France is leading the high performance end at this time (what works for them in Europe)and it makes no sense to duplicate that effort here. Hobie Cat USA is concentrating on developing entry level and recreational product. Our production and distribution facility in Australia is also keen on the fiberglass performance end. All three facilities ship product to each other. The facility in the USA is bursting at the seams and will be going through many changes in the following years to accommodate even higher production volumes.

We know exactly what is going on in the market and are responding with what the public really wants. Proof is in the pudding, we are growing at a rapid pace these days (have been for nearly 10 years). That pace has really picked up steam in the last 3-4 years. We are introducing thousands of new people to sailing and expect the trickle-down to bring a resurgence to the performance end some day. This takes time as people develop their sailing skills and interest over many, many years. We are cross marketing kayaks and catamarans. We see many people getting into kayaks and then adding a sail kit (we make thousands) to learn to sail and then showing interest in the larger cats.

Yes, there are Tiger parts in the catalog. A listing in the numerical section. We do not have every model represented in the diagrams section as there just isn't enough room in the catalog. Parts diagrams for the Tiger are extensive. They are also easily downloaded from our parts and support pages on our website.

Also, don't forget... we are THE ONLY catamaran company that even has a catalog of parts and accessories for catamarans.

Yes, we care about catamarans.

Not quite so correct. Undoubtedly your cataloges are more picturesque and probably more complete...but Nacra also catalogues quite a high percentage of their components as well. The price list is in a separate document.

http://nacra.us/nacra/Nacra%20Parts%20New.pdf

Hobie also seem a little more up to date (by that link). Is year 2000 the latest they have?

Tiger Mike

I agree...

Gosh, I don't know about you, but I love going to the Annapolis SAILboat show and seeing all the kayaks! <img src=

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