A Weekend at the Yacht Club

Well, the Hobie Cat is finally here and it is almost registered.Despite the registration not being complete yet, I decided to do some sailing since I now have a boat that is by the water ... so it as some attempts at sea trials. For this, I took out to other new hires: my neighbor Eamonn Houston from Ireland and Bill Ghent from Houston.  The weekend was pretty good and the boat was in the water both days. Here are some pictures!

Bill Ghent

Eamonn Houston

Bill and Eamonn

Derek and Bill

Eamonn and Derek in front of the boat

The boat all ready to sail

A boat in full sail - even a spinnaker!

So that was the first full weekend with the boat ... unfortunately the water was like glass and it was not possible to really get much going ... although the second day was most amusing ...

Note how the water is like glass and how the boats are moving ...

Unfortunately one of the children kicking the boats in became a traitor to his father and abandoned ship. The boat on the left had two loyal children to kick it in when the wind fully died.

Launching the new Hobie Cat!

At long last I finally have something blog about over here in the big sandbox: my Hobie Cat has finally arrived and it was a good weekend :-)

The first part was receiving the Hobie Cat. This finally happened at 11:30am on January 5, 2012. East and West Express delivered the goods!

The hulls and mast carefully packaged

The hulls and mast and deck with a bunch of boxes (on the tables behind)

And all the stuff again

Did I mention this was a French Hobie?

Well after a long afternoon (and another morning) with the help of some fantastic staff at HMYC - plus some assistance from the catamaran fleet Captain (James) the boat was finally assembled and ready for sea trials ...

This is the assembled Hobie and January 6 around noon

I also need to add a few more views of the new boat ...

The boat again with an old and  new beach cart

Now what is this - a SPINNAKER pole on the bow with a trumpet snuffer?

Note the very cool new beach cart to the right ...

I got in a few runs today, but needed to spend some time on the beach to dodge the Coast Guard since the boat registration is not complete and it was just easier to not answer questions. Still, I got in two runs despite the really light (and multi-directional) winds. The next task will be to get the spinnaker set up properly (this was learned the hard way) and get used to the boat itself.

There are some great people out at HMYC and everyone there was quite excited to see the new boat, but also commented that the only real difference was the hardware on it - goes to show the Hobie 16 is a classic design.

All in all, it was a good day ... with a great sunset ...