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HOBIE 101 COMING SOON

Hobie 101 at Sail Sand Point is coming up fast, May 10th. Please e-mail Jerry Valeske at hobietiger@hotmail.com for more information

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Hobie Division 4 tried something new this year with a Spring Season kick-off event at Potholes State Park.  The event was April 3-4 and was planned as a fun sail for the youth in our region. This will be the first in a series of youth events planned for 2008.

The weekend at Potholes State Park started out with cooler than normal temperatures.  But with rain forecasted for the Seattle Area, and snow in Spokane, we were just glad to see the sunshine. Fortunately, it was mostly dry with only one squall coming through briefly on Saturday.  With plenty of sunshine, the air temperature was in the lower 60’s, but the water temperature was 42, so dry suits were a must!  The winds stayed light to medium for the most part, which made for enjoyable flat water sailing. Occasionally we had the winds build to double trapeze strength, and the 18HT Javelin even capsized for us once. (Thanks David)

It felt like a family reunion as we had sailors attending from all across the Pacific Northwest.  Participants came from as far north as Vancouver BC, and as far east as Coeur D’Alene, Idaho.  The majority were camped together on several adjacent campsites.  Evenings were spent around the camp fire, with a BBQ potluck on the last night. There were sailing stories, s’mores and guitar playing until late in the evening.

The kids had free run of six Hobie Waves brought to the event and three Hobie Tigers that came out to do some pre-seasontuning.  Some of the older kids jumped at the chance to go for a ride on the high performance Tigers.  In addition to the catamarans we had 6 Hobie Kayaks, and Miles brought an Adventure Island. There were also a few other boats that came out just to enjoy the sailing on the lake.  We saw a Javelin F18HT (top and bottom), an FX One,  a couple of Hobie 18s, a Hobie 14, and three dinghies that came from the Chelan Sailing Association. 

The high point of the weekend was the Waves race on Saturday when a make-shift buoy was placed and six Waves did a beach start – first one around the buoy and back wins!  There were very few moments when there weren’t any boats out on the water.

It was quite a challenge to keep the kids suited up and sailing.  With a limited number of dry suits, it was a real changing drill when the boats would hit the beach and the kids would swap suits.  Special thanks to Sail Sand Point who lent us the extra sailing gear we needed and for the use of their life jackets.  Thanks also to Jerry Valeske and Miles More who brought the safety chase boats for the event. 

Also, thank-you to every one that helped out with the safety boat operation and the beach captains that made the whole operation come together.

I believe we succeeded in our goal to get the youth from our area out sailing early this year.  We had 29 youth, plus their parents attend this, our first youth event for this year.  Also there were nearly as many adults there to help in making the event a success.

Other events planned to help promote youth sailing are:

1.     Youth Sailing Clinic on May 10th

2.     Summer Celebration, July 26-27

3.     Oktoberfest, September 27-28,

All of these events will be at Sail Sand Point, on Lake Washington.

Mike Hensel

Hobie Fleet 95