The Outcasts of the Yacht Club Are Changing Sailing’s Image

Ask any child to draw a sailboat, and chances are you’ll see the same design: an upside-down semicircle for the hull with a triangle on top as the sail. But back in 1988, my 5-year-old self would have had a harder time sketching what I knew a sailboat to be — something more like a triangle balanced over two floating bananas.

I grew up in a multihull family. My dad was obsessed with his Hobie Cat 16 — a 16-foot (roughly 5-meter) catamaran ubiquitous on American shorelines in the ’80s, and unmistakable for its technicolor sails. These affordable beach boats could be found in almost any tourist brochure for New Jersey. Yet every time my dad suggested adding Hobie Cat racing to local yacht clubs’ annual regatta programs, he was met with the same refrain: Catamarans aren’t real sailboats.