Talk:Hobie Cat

2005

Howdy all,

I'm semi-actively working on this page - feel free to contribute!

Needed stuff: Intro Paragraph Hobie History (should be easy to get sources from Hobie website) Racing (state of racing, divisions and fleets, regattas and championships, Formula entries) Info on out-of-production boats - 14, 18, maybe Hobie 12 and Holder1 monohulls?

Thanks! Teejaypea 18:33, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Photo's Need Work

The current photo is lame. There are so many awesome pictures of Hobies ripping along raised up on a single hull, they tell the story better than the boring resort pic that the article has now.

98.245.170.157 (talk) 22:52, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Speed

These were very fast sailboats. How come no info on their speed?

I would not be surprised if they set some records, in their day they were some of the fastest sailboats around.

Also why no photos of them running with one hull out of the water and the sailor hanging over on a cable hooked to their belt?

This article is missing some of the most interesting aspects of the Hobie Cat story.

98.245.170.157 (talk) 22:40, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

History

This material is taken directly from the Hobicat website! K. Sargent 20:01, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

• Because of the purloined advertising here we can expect this entry to be selected for removal soon by the Wikipedia administrators.T.E. Goodwin 11:16, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

US bias!

This article only covers Hobie US boats!!!!

- there is a different range in Europe.

You are correct, although Hobie Australasia & Hobie USA offer a similar product line, Many ( perhaps most) Hobie Europe models are missing. --I20-312 01:26, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Obviously! their need to update the European models which has got tremendous impact on Hobie cat. ---Arun P T

Comp Tip

Somebody needs to take a stab at the whole comp tip issue.

At some point, at least the Hobie 14 (the 16 was almost certainly included) were eligible for a "warranty modification" where the upper section of the mast was replaced by the composite "Comp Tip." I doubt I have the letter I received from them around 1993 when they reworked the mast on my JT14. I've tried to find reference to it in other places on line, but all I can find is reference to some accidents with the old H16 in the 70's and the following case: http://www.lawskills.com/case/ga/id/44772/ regarding COAST CATAMARAN CORPORATION et al. v. MANN; and vice versa

--Bagheera 23:45, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

I removed the parenthetical "or two hulled" description after "catamaran" at the beginning of the article. "Two hulled" is not the same as "catamaran", it also includes tacking outriggers and proas. "Catamaran" by itself is better.

H16s and H18s did have the comptip modification.

Hobie Alter recently gave an interview on Sailing Anarchy, it might be a good source for some data for the article.

Baron ridiculous (talk) 02:29, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

production info

would be nice to have the years each model was in production and how many were made —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bjarthur (talk • contribs) 23:49, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Please note he missed one US production boat: Hobie 12. It had asymetrical hulls with a solid fiberglass deck running the length of the boat. Single main sail, a teak swing centerboard, and single teak rudder. It weighed only 150 lbs but provided a ton of fun.97.76.202.252 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 23:38, 11 August 2011 (UTC).

What is the topic of this article?

The intro says it's about "Hobie Cats" which are small catamaran sailboats. If so there is no good reason to have the Hobie 33 listed here. After all "Hobie Cat" the company also makes kayaks, kayak/trimarans, standup surfboards and probably other things too. None of them are "Hobie Cats" though. On the other hand if the article is meant to be about the company "Hobie Cat" all that makes sense to include, but the intro needs to be re-written As it stands it's neither fish now fowl. 24.22.76.12 (talk) 02:24, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

Fair point. The lead is about catamarans. "See also" would be the place for non-catamaran products of the Hobie Corporation. User:HopsonRoad 02:39, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

I have to agree with both the above comments. As it stands the article's topic isn't clear. If it is going to be about the Hobie Cat, the sailboat type then all of the monohull sailboats should come out of the article.

One can compare this article to the Nacra Sailing article, which I was the initiator of a few years ago, and that article might be a useful template for evolving this article. (Which is ironic as that article was originally modeled on this one) What's nice about that article is that it has moved in a very nice direction with the addition of many edits, I'm assuming some from people close to the company, and is now titled Nacra Sailing, and uses the outline of a "company profile". I had originally written it as a generic article about Nacra Catamarans (like this is a generic article about Hobie catamarans). I'm not sure at which point it definatively flipped into being about the company, but the net result is a more coherent, better article.

This "company centric" template or focus permits a section on the history of the company, notable products, and information one would hope to find like where is the company headquartered.

I think it would be improve and broaden this article to explicitly make it Hobie Cat Company. This would allow inclusion about all the roto-molded kayaks, which at this point dwarf the sales of catamarans. (As well as other products)

One of the first changes should be changing the title of the article from Hobie Cat, to Hobie Cat Company.

If there is some objection to this then we really should rip out all the monohulls described in this article, because while they are made by the Hobie Cat Company (so are sunglasses) they are not "Hobie Cats".

ZeroXero (talk) 20:27, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

I favor renaming the article "Hobie (company)" or "Hobie (watercraft manufacturer)". Many of its more notable products have their own pages. Its website uses "Hobie". Cheers, HopsonRoad (talk) 21:27, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

Upon further reflection, ZeroXero, I suggest that the name of the article adequately refers to the company, as well, so I changed the lead sentence to read: "Hobie Cat is a company that manufactures sailing catamarans, surfboards, sailboats, kayaks, stand-up paddle boards, and pedalboards as the Hobie Cat Company." I hope that this works for you. Cheers, HopsonRoad (talk) 13:33, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

Yes, this does make sense, it's a good solution. Thank you! ZeroXero (talk) 07:36, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

External links modified

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Adding links and working on the problems with this article

This article has a lot of issues, that are called out in the information boxes at the top when you load it. I'm trying to fix them.

I started by working to add links everywhere that they were called out as needed. I'm also going to be trying to replace the naked links with proper ones, another problem called out.

As I've worked through it from top to bottom I've also re-written parts that had good information, but were repetitive or sounded like "clipped directly from some promotional marketing material".

There is still a lot of work to do.

Another change I think would be useful, which I'm not going to delve into right now, is improvements to the table. It's a great resource. There is a somewhat awkward paragraph listing what year about 10 Hobie Cats were release in. That seems like it would be a good additional column for the table. Ditto for "units produced".

At some point when that's worked on it might also make sense to separate out the fewer monohulls and trimarans into a separate table for clarity. Eventually it would be good to have (also) another table for all the rotomolded kayaks and such.

ZeroXero (talk) 20:50, 11 December 2022 (UTC)