Friday, September 7, 2012



Some time ago I decided to build a beach catamaran, a Hobby Kat, drawings of which were published in 1973 Mechanix illustrated, are freely available on WEB in these days, displayed on many sites, here is one: http://svensons.com/boat/?p=SailBoats/Hobby_Kat

Why Hobby Kat?
Free plans, easy to build, very similar to Hobie Cat (what a surprise! Even name is similar ;-) ), which is one of the most popular beach cats today... Also - there has been many questions on if it is worth to build, and how it would sail; on different forums. This also interested me, I wanted to find it out.

The project was started in 2009, the hulls were finished, rigging partially. But as I went to work abroad, it was put on hold, until this year, 2012, when it was assembled and launched.

There was a website about this once already, but due to change of regulations, the free web hostings were cut, so it disappeared. I will now restore the construction process for information and ideas and thoughts that could be useful for this or any other design.

I have made a few changes to original plans - length of the hulls has been extended from 14' to 16'; also, I have used Hobie Cat 16 sails; both main and jib, as I got these for real bargain price (this could otherwise be one of the biggest costs you will have). Not mentioning about many smaller details.