Hobie Cat Forums

Let’s Get Together and Have Fun!

Hobie Cat and your Hobie Dealer invite you to the Hobie Island Club ~ SoCal Rendezvous!

Please join us for clinics, camaraderie, sailing and fun!

This event will be held on
Saturday, October 13, 2012 at
Baby Beach, Dana Point Harbor, Dana Point, California

For more information and to RSVP, please see our invite:

http://static.hobiecat.com/web_uploads/2012/09/03/webHIC2012invite.docx

There are about twenty Islands coming so far including a bunch of us from the factory. Looking forward to a great day!

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Brendan Castile

That sounds like fun. You ought to schedule one in S FL.

Keith

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I sail: S FL, Key Largo, Everglades, 10,000 Islands, Cape Romano, Cedar Key

"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex ... It takes a touch of genius and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction." A. Einstein

The first "Big Day Out" in Australia attracted 43 Islands! Here is a shot of just some of them. Looking forward to one closer to home.

It looks like we're about to hit the 30 boat mark for attending boats! We still have a couple more weeks to spread the word and I think we may get close to the size of "The Big Day Out" in Australia!

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Brendan Castile

Question...........We are attending the Rendezvous and are trailering our TI down from Belmont Shore. Is it possible to unload the TI onto our beach cart and then leave the car and trailer parked somewhere near Baby Beach? If not in the parking lot near Baby Beach, how about on the street?

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you can unload at Baby Beach and park on the street, but it can get very crowed.
it is much easier to pay the $10 ($5 if you car-top) and use the ramp.

I drove through Baby Beach at 1:30 today. there was lots of parking in the lot and on the street

A good way to go will be to put your boat in at the ramp and pedal/sail around the corner to Baby Beach. It's about a mile from the ramp to the beach so leave yourself 20 minutes or so and enjoy the calm harbor in the morning. You can head down the middle of the harbor if you leave your mast down. I think it may be too low for a mast but I may be wrong. I plan on getting there fairly early and unloading boats at Baby Beach. I'll park at the launch ramp lot and either pedal the last boat around or walk back to the beach.

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Brendan Castile

Thanks, sounds like the ramp is the way to go. My concern was we've never used the trailer and we weren't sure how hard it would be to pull the TI back up on to the trailer. We've gone from beach cart to trailer and back just to try out the fit and that was pretty easy. Most days I just walk over to the bay using the beach cart and drop it in the water. We'll see how it goes.

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This is the perfect opportunity to do it then! There will be plenty of help and others to watch.

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Brendan Castile

This was a great event! Super job by the Hobie staff! We had the greatest time. Here's some shots from the beach launch site in Dana Point. Our TI is the one named "American Honey".

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I'll share the video I took at the SoCal rendezvous. I put it on the Facebook page for Hobie Island Club also. This is some pretty tame video coming back into the channel. With my experience level, out in the swells I had my hands too full to take any video. One boat flipped over and turtled, but Hobie had a jetski and a powerboat at the event to help out. I think they were a newbie couple like us. But right after the boat got put back together and upright, they got back in and kept going!

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We all had a great time on Saturday. Thank you for joining us and posting your photos and video. It definitely got windier than I thought it would, and we couldn't have had better weather. Looking forward to the next one!

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Brendan Castile

I am a Hobie AI and TI owner in Portland Oregon who is looking for chances to rent/borrow/trade boats for exploring waters in other areas. I have had nice rental experiences on several occasions in St. Thomas, Key Largo, Houston Texas (Galveston Bay) with dealers who have rental stock.

We have also sailed for years with Kayaking Bob Conlon in Kihei on Maui, and here in the NW USA. Our efforts to find or rent boats in Sydney AUS were not successful, mostly due to bad timing with AI AUS owners' own travel plans.

Currently I am wanting to explore Newport Bay, CA. I have a place to stay there on the water and could shore launch. THere are three dealers in the area, one has demo stock, but they cite insurance classification reasons as preventing them from renting boats, even to Hobie Island Club members.

So I am interested to find two boats down there. I can work with owners to guarantee repair or replacement costs. If it matters I can make my own boats available for a similar arrangement up here. I am a lawyer and helped Kayaking Bob come up with a legal release a couple of years ago that covers everything, including whales and all manner of misadventures.

My AI/TI experience includes lots of use and experimentation including some big water experiences with Kayaking Bob near Molokini, Oregon coast surf launching of an AI with Lifeguard backup (don't try it), using a TI and then an AI as my "rental vehicle" in the USVI, camping with my sons in Florida Bay Wilderness with 3 AIs, racing an AI central hull in a 9.5 mile open kayak race (pulled up the rudder [too much drag], pedaled and paddled to accelerate during turns-won that race. I have also had some interesting experiences such as breaking a Mirage drive mast while offshore and removing that flappingflipper and pedaling in with one-worked fine. I use a 47' houseboat "mothership" to tether the boats up here, and round out my boat life with 2 insanely fast HOnda turbo jetskis. My primary time on the water is as a year round rower in Fluidesign and Echo Ace race singles, a Hudson Double, Alden 19 and Echo open water shell. I organize and participate in what will be two open water races on the Mississippi River September 21-22,2013, the Quincy5miler and Bear Creek Grunt (15 mi.).

It is 1000 miles to drive down to Newport Bay with my trailered boats and that is just too far. It is unfortunate that there are so few rental boats available. However, individual owners, particularly Hobie Island Club members, may be able to team up on sharing the boats that are out there. I would be interested to help others in that effort. There are a number of places I would like to explore with an AI/TI so if there are other owners who would be open to such an arrangement please post.

Ray did you find some boats for your trip?

If not I have an AI that we might be able to work something out on. I live about 90 mins drive from Newport Bay. Let me know.

Barry

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Life is the Journey - not the Destination