Dear Hobie Sailors,

At the end of this month we will honour a new Hobie Tiger World Champion.  The team behind the scenes has organised what can only be described as some wonderful surprises for the sailors. For those of you who can not attend please tune into the web site at www.hobieworlds.com . Again we have some surprises on the web site to ensure those at home will fell as if they are part of the championships.

We also have the 17th Hobie 16 World Championships Nelson Mandela Bay, RSA 24th October-4th November 2005. The entries are rolling in from all parts of the world. Don’t forget to enter early as it is strictly first entered and paid that we can guarantee to supply boats to.  

Recently there has been a lot of confusion from both the sailors and National Sailing Authorities regarding the future multihull discipline at the ISAF Youth Worlds. It is clear in the current ISAF Regulations the only boat that can be chosen for the ISAF Youth Worlds is the Hobie 16 with spinnaker. A report on the ISAF Web site only explained that after the trials in Quiberon 2 years ago, the SL 16 was the boat that has been chosen by the selection panel. It should be remembered the Hobie 16 were excluded from winning the trials as it did not have a spinnaker. The trials were only to see what other multihulls were suitable for the youth.  So to make it clear to everyone the Hobie 16 with spinnaker is the ISAF youth boat for more years to come.

IHCA Vice President Fritz-R Klocke has been in hospital and is now recovering. On behalf of all Hobie sailors we wish Fritz a speedy recovery and we see him back out on the race course soon.