Hobie Cat Forums

Been sailing off the N Myrtle this past week with family. Wind was good and the water flat most days which is kinda unusual for the coast. There are parasail boats and jet skis pulling banana boats everywhere which is no big deal. I noticed that the banana boat/jet ski guys were following me on several occasions but didn't think anything of it. Well Sunday the wind was light and as we were cruising down the coast one of the banana boat/jet ski guys came right up to us and stopped to talk. He proceeded to tell us how amazed he was with the speed of our Hobie. He had paced us several runs at 27mph and one run where he said he guesses we were over 30. Pretty sweet huh!

The flat water was the key to the speed but the Whirlwind rags sure got the job done with ease! Thanks Chip!

What boat do you have?

Marty
Hobie 18SX

I thought I told you to wear a mask when you are working with polyester resin. The styrene makes you crazy.

I didn't inhale!
Seriously though, he said he paced me at 27 with my brother in law and nephew on board. We were all on the wing and it was cooking but I would have never guessed 27 not to mention his talk of 30 plus. The conditions were awesome though! My brother in law wants to buy a 18 now.

MartyH-
I sail a '82 H18 Magnum with an SX rig, Whirlwind pentex squaretop main and matching pentex self-tacking jib, F18 spinnaker system including mid-pole snuffer.

I'd have to see that on a gps to believe it. I question the accuracy of the speedo's on water bikes.

Tom

The short spurts I sail would be hard to pick up on gps. I doubt you could get an accurate speed from a gps either. The beacons and gps units used in the Tybee and Great Texas don't do a good job of tracking speed. The garmin on our fishing boat does a good job but we run several miles straight out and back. Either way the jetski operator was impressed with the speed and is now interested in beach cats!

The jetski was pulling a banana boat so he might be accurate as his sensor stayed in the water.

27 mph or not....if you convinced a jet skier to convert to a catamaran....I'm with ya!

Tom

Nice job on the jet ski conversion but....

I highly doubt you were doing 27 mph. I hit a GPS verified speed of 25 kts on the N20 during Tybee. This I believe as the top guys were doing 27 kts+ in the same conditions on N20's and F18's. Fully overpowered and steep chop. I'm sure in flat water the N20/F18's can hit 30 kts+ given the right crew and breeze. Doing the same, even in your highly tricked out H18, is improbable. I could believe low 20's in MPH, which is still cooking and why we sail these boats.

As far as GPS speed goes, I trust it more than pretty much any other speed instrument out there. Speedos are notoriously difficult to calibrate (ever tried to calibrate the instruments on a big boat?), and there is always current which makes any through the water reading suspect. At least GPS gives you your speed over ground. You can't believe the instant readings though, they can peak a few kts/mph over your actual speed, but the average is darn good and you can re-build your average using position and time.

That's true that the peaks can be higher than reality. My '02 Nissan Xterra peaked at over 200km/h on a GPS, but the speed cut off is at 150km/h and can only reach that downhill. I believe the topography and location of the GPS blocked somemof the satellite signal giving the false reading.

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Marc...
1978 Hobie 16 Keoke, sail# 36 84

You've got this part backwards. Current affects your speed "over the ground" (i.e. over the surface of the earth, which is what GPS measures). Instruments that measure speed "through the water" (while often highly suspect and hard to calibrate) are not affected by current. If you are sailing at ten knots "through the water" into a five knot current, your speed "over the ground" would be 5 knots but your speed "through the water" would still be 10 knots.

Yes, you are correct, I said that backwards. The problem is calibrating to a truth-the GPS is truth, but only if there is no current as you just explained. Getting the speedo in a location where it reads correctly on all points of sail is challenging so it needs calibration but how do you know there is no current when calibration?

I wish I had a gps on it that day. This was a rare day on the ocean, 16-18kts wind and little to no swell or chop. We sailed until dark because the conditions were just so perfect.
I am running the wings and we were on them, two adults and one child. The wings effectively give you a double trapped side load.
Maybe yes, maybe no! How many times have you had a jetskier stop to tell you how fast he thought you were going?

We were over powered, on the edge of pitchpole with every gust. Its amazing how much power comes from the squaretop and how it makes the boat heal. Awesome sailing!

You can't compare race speeds to play speeds. I had no line to follow, no bouy to make, nothing to dodge. All I was doing was looking for the fastest angle possible. On this day I guarantee the I-20 could have run 30mph+. Keep in mind that I have sailed I-20s, Mysteres, Miracle 20s and the Fox in the past and know what they can do. F18s have proven to eat I-20s for lunch and my H18 is very close to the F18 in straight line speed.

My rule of thumb: if you have the GPS, you won't have a perfect day of sailing!

After sailing my bone stock, no wings 1980 Hobie 18 Saturday in 15 kts of breeze gusting to 18 kts, in steep (4'), short chop and regularly hitting 16 kts on the GPS, I believe 27 MPH is very achievable.

Our max speed for the day: 16.1 kts, 18.5 MPH
Our average speed on that leg: 15.2 kts, 17.5 MPH

We sailed 18.8 miles, upwind and downwind, in less than 3 hours. I don't know much less as the GPS was sitting on at the beach for probably 1/2 hour. I do know upwind we were pegged at >8 kts and downwind I rarely saw less than 14.5 kts. This was with a first time crew aboard, she had a complete blast!

I'm sure your fully tricked out 18 can do much better downwind and has more sail control to handle the breeze. I've only had one day like you've mentioned on the ocean, our first time sailing in the ocean on the N20. It was like glass in S. Myrtle with 15-17 kts of breeze, fully powered up, wire to wire spin reaching just keeping the hull flying for 10+ minutes at a time, total blast!

Oh, I received a spinnaker for the Hobie 18 last week. It needs snuffer patches sewn into it but otherwise is a brand new sail that looks like it will work pretty well on the 18, couldn't beat the price! I'm negotiating the spinnaker pole and rest of the hardware, hopefully that will be here in the next week so I can get it installed on the boat ASAP in preparation for the NCC 100.

-Sam

I was out yesterday on the lake and had some nice gusts close to 20 Kts. I recorded a max speed of 19MPH on the GPS and I believe that is accurate. There was a lot of chop and boat wakes that do slow things down some. I know I have gone faster but we had some all out bursts of speed in some of the gusts, front leward hull almost going under with 390 lbs of crew on the back of the wing.

I know it can go over 20MPH and I have seen other posts of 23-24 before. 27MPH seems like a lot but I bet it can do it in the right conditions.

Either way I had a great day of sailing

We did launch off a 6ft+ boat wake (50 foot flybridge powerboat on full plane) with decent power in the sails, caught some air - big fun.

How fast would you say the "nuken" scene is?



A hobie 18 can hit over 25 kts, even an old one. You just need tons of wind and able crew. Here we had 4 on the boat. Skipper, skipper backup, 2 on the wire. The wind was 45 kts. This boat is now retired.

My nacra I have hit 25 kts in 18-20kts of wind several times. It's just a lighter boat with tons of sail area and downwind, planes off. Let me say this.. You will know when you have gone that fast. It feels twice as fast as normal the 18-20 kts of boat speed (which is still really cooking). And you learn a deep respect for the wind/water after such events. We are specs on the pale blue dot.

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Norm Hanson