NEW hobie 14

Wasn't there talk of a group of people getting together an order of NEW hobie 14s from Hobie europe or brazil or somewhere? If I wanted a brand new 14 or set of 14 hulls, what would be the most cost effective way to do it??

I knew someone that was importing a few Tigers from Germany and I was going to see what it would cost to get the 14s over here. All the boats had good sails, fairly new hulls and CARBON rudders. The dealer wanted a lot of money for them, so I stopped pursuing it. My plan was to split the shipping with the Tigers, but it just turned out to cost too much and I wouldn't be able to sell the boats in the US and come close to getting my money back!

Dan Berger

Yeah, too bad that they replaced the 14 with a plastic toy! Has anyone out there tried the new Dragoon or whatever ( the H.C. Europe small 14 sized boat)?- Dave

I've sailed a Wave-the 14' from Europe is the Dragoon-as far as I know, their are non of these in Maryland and very few in the U.S at this time. It is a different boat, from the pictures-it has skigs and symetrical hulls-its really designed as a youth race trainer, not a one design single hander like the 14. The wave I sailed was a rental and I had four people on it-crowded and slow but douable, my main complaint was that the rental shop had disabled the cams so the rudders woudn't lock down! Not good when the gusts hit! Their is a person on my beach with one as well-I haven't sailed it but have sailed next to it, about as close as two sailboats can get without disrupting airflow-we had two peopl on mine and one on his and were still beating him! And thats before my sleek new paint job (btw, my boats at least 10 % faster now and rides like a dream-but the hulls had so liitle paint they had lost part of the contour, so this doesn't make evry boat that much faster) and bottom job! Also, new hulls are available from hobie usa at over $1000 a piece (from the hobie catalog, guess they import them from europe). Wish they would still sell boats here-I've herd of them doing some special orders (how else did they have some new boats at the continentals?).

Sam

Well I live in the UK, but i'm currently in the US on vacation, so when I get back I'll check out the prices and post them here, so you can see just how much they are over in europe.

_________________
Stu

Thank you, as I understand it they are about $5000 usd; this doesn't exactly help, since it is harder to get one shipped here than to buy one from over their-my main question was refering to how Hobie US supplies hulls and other large parts, when the boats are no longer made over here.

Sam

Well the hulls for the older boats like the HC 14 are made by hobies sister company hobie europe and then shipped over, this is proberly why they are so expensive 1800 USD for a single 14 hull