Key Moments 2023

On one of our lay days, I was strolling along a beach with my teenage son when we came across a guy under a palm tree selling Ting and Carib out of cooler full of ice. It turned out that he had an old Hobie 16 pulled up the beach, and for a small handful of East Caribbean Dollars, he’d let us take it out for the afternoon – once I’d convinced him we knew what we were doing. When I say this Hobie Cat was old, it had certainly seen some action, with bits of it being held together with hose clamps and zip ties and bolts that were too long, and so on. I think the sailplan was more patches than original sailcloth, and all of those patches had been hand-sewn. No problem.
We began by tipping the boat on its side on the beach to reeve the main halyard, but that was easily done, and we were quickly out on the warm, crystal-clear waters of the Caribbean Sea. There was maybe ten knots of breeze, very light for late season trade winds, so we were never going to break any records. Probably for the best, given the slackness in the attachment of the tiller extension. And all the steering gear, in fact. But what an amazing time we had reaching up and down the bay with the wind on the beam and then out to sea a little way before zig-zagging our way back in again.

Earlier this year, in MW191, an article by our esteemed colleague François investigated the post-Covid explosion in the second-hand multihull market, and its consequently exploding prices, but our little afternoon’s Hobie Catting proved that you really don’t need a six or seven-figure budget to have absolutely the best time on two or three hulls.

Graham Shaw 
Translator