New Blog 2: Hobie Cat For Sale

Hobie Cat For Sale

A Hobie Cat is a small sailing catamaran manufactured by the Hobie Cat Company. Hobie's line of products ranges from surfboards to catamaran sailboats to kayaks and stand-up paddle boards, though the Hobie Cat Company is most famous around the world for its catamarans. Hobie also designed a very successful monohull, the Hobie 33.The company founder, Hobie Alter, began as a surfboard manufacturer in the late 1950s. According to one source, after sailing on the world's first ocean-going catamaran, the Manu Kai, Alter patented the idea.[1] According to another source, Alter's focus changed in 1961 to designing an easily beached fibreglass catamaran. The impetus of this shift is attributed to a 1961 boat show in Anaheim, CA which placed Alter in a booth selling surfboards, next to Art Javes, the designer of the new (1961) AQUA CAT 12 sailboat. That sailboat featured lightweight fibreglass hulls with an aluminium tube structure supporting a trampoline style deck for seating. The AQUA CAT catamaran did well in shallow water, but relied on dagger boards to reduce slippage sidewise under sail. Dagger boards were also used by the much heavier Pacific Cat from 1960. That design featured a solid fibreglass deck on a 19' x 8' boat, giving it a weight of almost 500 pounds.