[MHml] (no subject)

[mike misiaszek]

great post. i'm looking for a trifoiler or rave. if
you know of one for sale please pass the info along.
i'm in upstate new york and sail a hobie 14 on oneida
lake.
thanks again for the great post
mike
--- Chris Ostlind <Chris at Wedgesail.com> wrote:

> Hi Roy,
> 
> Since nobody else has a taken on this topic...
> 
> The Rave came out of the kayak industry. The parent
> company of Windrider sailing boats was Confluence
> Watersports which also owned Wilderness Systems
> kayaks, Wavesport whitewater boats, Mad River Canoe
> and Harmony Accessories. They now also own
> Perception kayaks, Dagger kayaks, Adventure
> Technology paddles and a generic brand, Mainstream.
> 
> The Confluence brand emerged when Wilderness Systems
> acquired/developed the initial brand companies as
> shown above. They then developed Windrider as a
> sailing extension to their overall corporate line so
> they could make a move into sailing at the
> car-toppable/small trailer level. 
> 
> Windrider first emerged with the Jim Brown designed
> Windrider 16, (very fun boat, by the way) that was
> followed by the Windrider 10 which was designed by
> Mark Balogh. There was a conscious decision to
> hook-up with Dr. Bradfield to develop the Windrider
> Rave product. The Rave established Windrider as a
> technologically driven company within the over all
> Confluence umbrella.
> 
> I suspect that the Rave was purely developed to make
> the Confluence brand more attractive to an investor
> group and had only a small amount to do with
> actually getting a production foiling multihull out
> on the market, where it could truly generate sales
> and a following.
> 
> Windrider went on to develop the Windrider 17 in
> concert with Jim Brown (again) and proceeded to
> market that boat with some degree of gusto in the
> marketplace. At the same time, the Rave was slowly
> dwindling away as sales were on the slow side and
> there was not the type of corporate support that
> would, or could, make the difference. 
> 
> The company was acquired by investors who had made a
> killing in the stock market and probably thought it
> very cool to own a kayak business. They knew
> virtually nothing about the business of boating, or
> the psychology, of small craft boaters and how they
> went about making their purchases. 
> 
> There was a huge shift in the kayak/canoe/whitewater
> market at the same time, as several really huge
> companies emerged to, (Watermark and Johnson
> Outdoors) more or less, control the market.. save
> for the much smaller, non-acquired firms, still
> catering to aligned issues of paddler response,
> customer service and non-leveraged dealings with the
> shops that carried their brands.
> 
> In all this big business BS, the Rave product got
> totally lost and slipped away into ignominy, just as
> the, now discontinued, Hobie Trifoiler did. Too
> complex a boat, too much hassle at the launch site,
> too narrow of a bandwidth for really nasty sailing
> speeds, etc. Just too many too's to make for a great
> boat. The Trifoiler may have suffered from other
> issues and if Greg Ketterman reads this list,
> perhaps he can illuminate the process.
> 
> I've sailed both the Trifoiler and the Rave in San
> Pedro, California's Hurricane Gulch and found them
> to be wonderful machines... when in their element.
> They really like smooth, more or less protected
> waters, with a steady, potent breeze to light-up
> their potential. Both boats can really haul-ass in
> those conditions and can generate certifiable, neck
> warping G-forces in turns, as well as flat-out
> straight-line velocity that smokes the fastest of
> beach cats, regardless of size. Both of these boats
> have clocked in the mid, thirty knot region in the
> right conditions and are, without a doubt, true high
> performers on a reasonable budget. There just aren't
> many sailors who find the whole, ultra-performance
> deal, all that compelling. And so, they died.
> 
> I see the Moth foilers as being a part of that same
> paradigm. Sure, they can bring it in the hands of a
> tuned and talented sailor, but they also have to be
> fiddled with to launch, cost a bundle for what you
> get and if they break, how long does it take to get
> the parts to get that bad boy back on track?
> 
> The Rave sorted through many of these same negative
> issues several years ago and there aren't really any
> good solutions in the works since then. You want to
> go hyper-fast, then expect to hyper-fiddle to get
> there. Such have been the rules for all really fast
> vehicles (of any kind) since day one.
> 
> Others may have their own take on all this, but
> that's mine.
> 
> Chris>
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