The organization of the 17th Hobie Cat 16 World Championships 2005, has received over two hundred pre-entries. These teams represent 28 countries, of which 10 are European. They will all compete for the World titles in the Nelson Mandela Bay of Port Elizabeth in South-Africa. From Tuesday October 25th until Friday November 4th , the heat is on. The fleet is very competitive with current and past champions, like Cedric Bader / Yann Montoya (FRA) who won this year’s Hobie 16 Europeans Youth, as well as the Open, but equally so, the 13 time South African Champion Blaine / Roxanne Dodds. They won the world title in 1998. And former Hobie 16 World Champion Shaun Ferry from South Africa will also keep the top runners honest.

Favourites
The history of the Hobie 16 Worlds shows that the Australians have been the most successful with six victories. Fourteen Aussie teams will go for a 7th victory, whereas Bob Enwirda/Anna Wenmmo and Tim Shuwalow/Cameron Hooper are the strongest candidates. They can expect tough competition of many other top sailors, like the current Hobie 16 Youth World Champion Jerome Legal (FRA). He is now too old to defend that title, therefore he and Mickael Siret are aiming at the next one in the open class. Christophe Renaud de Malet and Alban Rossollin, also from France, will try to better their 6th position of last year. Other top ten potentials are Mark Laruffa (ITA), Stephan Rumph/Kim Liedtke (GER) and former World Champion (1994) Enrique Figueroa with Carla Malatrasi (PUR). Enrique Figueroa has a wonderful season winning the Hobie Tiger Worlds earlier in the year. Then following that up by winning the North American Hobie 16 Championships. A dark horse, from Guatamala, is young Juan Maegli, who finished 4th at the Cancun Hobie 16 Worlds 2004.

Women
The womens fleet is competitive as well, with last year’s winners Pamela Noriega of Mexico and Marie Duvignac and Pauline Thevenot (FRA) who won the Women Europeans 2005. Other favourites are Morgane Laurancy and Marion Pennaneach (FRA) and former ISAF Women’s World Champion Inge Schubort (RSA).

**Day 1 - Oct. 7th 2005**

After an 11th hour entrant at last night’s registration party at Dublin Jack’s, a total of 47 Hobie Cats, comprising 7 home based Hobie Tigers and 40 Hobie 16’s, had signed up for the first ever Hobie Asian Championship.

This event follows on from 11 consecutive years of the Club’s Hobie Asian Classic and has attracted this year visiting teams from an impressive 10 nations besides the 32 locally based entrants.

This morning at 10:00 hrs Commodore Nigel Harris welcomed the competitors to Tai Tam Beach on behalf of the main sponsors, Allied Pickfords, before handing the proceedings over to the Principle Race Officer Jerry Rollin who had flown in from Manila the day before to officiate over events on the water.

A total of 44 boats took to the water for today’s 3 back to back races. We presume 3 local teams were unable to take the day off work but we look forward to them joining the fray tomorrow morning.

The Sea Cliff Yacht Club and the Trustees of the Deed of Gift of the International Catamaran Challenge Trophy are inviting bids from yacht clubs and/or organizing authorities to host the 2006 regatta. Submission of bids should be sent in accordance with the contact information shown below, by November 5, 2005. Announcement of the winning will be made on November 15, 2005.

It is well known among US multihull enthusiasts that in April 2005 Vectorworks Marine Inc entered into an agreement with Bimare to be the licensed builder in the United States of the XJ A class catamaran.

Now, a few months later, the first XJs made in the USA have started to be delivered.

Class and formula racing catamarans need constant attention and development to remain not only competitive but to deliver the utmost reliability and satisfaction to their owners. Continued advances in design, materials, and like technologies are not often within the reach of most cat sailors even if they had the time. VMI has already begun working with a few US top catamaran helmsmen and sailmakers for the continued development of the XJ. Then working jointly with the factory in Italy, also striving to continually improve the package, we are confident that this relationship will keep BIMARE/VMI boats at the forefront of the A class worldwide.

By Dan DeLave

I wanted to talk about the weekends regatta but first I would like to point out that there seems to be an increasing understanding that since the yacht clubs are running more regattas these days for multihulls there are more yacht club members in our ranks. For example 8 of the 11 entries in the Formula 18 event are members of yacht clubs. There are also sailing associations that are worth looking into if there is a monetary concern. Pick one that is a member of the Southern California Yachting Association. This will open up even more events to multihulls.

This weekends regatta started off with a threat of a high pressure system hanging over or near the Long Beach event. That would not be good for the typically good conditions that most people come to the event for. That high pressure system either did not fully materialize or went away somewhere.

The noon start saw about 5 MPH of breeze and most of the boats made it to the starting line on time. Dave Sparkuhl, sailing with Karen Christensen, was giving lessons to the Formula 18 group on how to sail in that light breeze. He took the lead and kept finding ways to increase boat lengths to finish in a comfortable first. Followed by Steve Leo then Jeff Petron.