Total Number of Hobie Adventure and Tandem Islands Built?

Matt (or anyone with the info) is is possible to get a figure on the total of Islands built since they were introduced thru 12/31/20?

I expect that figure to be in the many thousands- and I suspect the Islands to be the most popular sailboats made in the last decade- and ranking all time.

Would love to know this too, also how many are in Australia, I'm always trying to track down more owners for the community

Hobie never releases detailed sales numbers. We build 10s of 1,000s of kayaks a year.

_________________
Matt Miller
Former - Director of Parts and Accessory Sales
Warranty and Technical Support
Hobie Cat USA
(Retired 11/7/2022)

No idea but the AI/TI line of sailboats has become the boat I see most often on the 3 or 4 sailing venues I frequent. Even more so than Hobie 16's or Sunfishes.

I have yet to meet a single person besides me who has one in real life.

I just sold my my 2017 TMI last week. I've only seen one other than mine in my neck of the woods

They are out there. Lots of them all around the World.

https://www.hobie.com/hobie-island-club/

_________________
Matt Miller
Former - Director of Parts and Accessory Sales
Warranty and Technical Support
Hobie Cat USA
(Retired 11/7/2022)

Between AI's and TI's, there are now 12 on our local reservoir. Most all the result of others seeing mine some years ago.

They tend to sell themselves once people see or try one in-person.

I got a lot of waves and questions about mine.

The reason I ask is that I got into a debate on a sailing website about what is the most widely sold small sailboat of the last decade. I think its the AI / TI.

My point was that I thought adjustable sail area and auxiliary propulsion were critical advantages to open sailing up to non-sailors and sell "fun" boats. It was not a popular view.

Maybe I'm wrong. Its happened many times before. But a ballpark figure of how many TI / AI's in the world would be interesting. Must be over 10K by now- but could be WAY more than that...

I would guess they certainly outsell about any fiberglass type of "real" sailboat.

One of the marine industry trade groups put out a statement a couple or three years ago that the total number of new sailboats sold in the U.S.that year (2017?) was only 5000 units. I doubt that included sails of sailing kayaks such as the AI/TI but could be wrong.

There's no way the AI/TI, even combined, sells more units than Lasers every year. Pretty sure laser registration # are in the 2xx,xxx range these days

The Laser is a very strong one-design class but there are many used Lasers out and around available for sale. No idea what their actual yearly sales numbers are, but every manufacturer of small glass sailboats that I've spoken with tells me that their goal is to sell at least 50 boats per year.

We'll never know, but I'd bet that for every new Laser sold, there are 10 AI/TI's sold... if not more.

.............

Where I live, the TI is a never-ending topic of curiosity. In the six years I've been sailing mine, there has never been a single time where someone didn't come up to me during launching and/or recovery and ask all kinds of questions about it. The biggest problem with my TI is that I can never launch or recover it without spending like 45 minutes talking to people who come around to look at it. They always ask how much it costs and where to get one. I've even had people on the water pull up next to me and want to talk about it. I never thought it would draw so much curiosity when I bought it.

Over the years I've sold around 25-30 of these boats for my local Hobie dealer just from these dockside discussions. My dealer loves me, he keeps pinging me to post to his Facebook and LinkedIn pages.

So, I keep seeing more and more of them where I sail. I used to be the only one who had one that I was aware of.