hobie 3.5

can i rig myself a trapeze system and if so how?

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when the winds not blowin your not goin

Those boats (Hobie 3.5) were never designed to have a trapeze. I don't think the mast and front crossbar would hold up to the stress.

Sounds like a good way to break the boat.

well dont want to break it what would break any ways i know the mast is aluminum

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when the winds not blowin your not goin

Mast would bend (permanently) and possibly break.

Front crossbar would invert and possibly break.

Even a 14 (which the 3.5 is based on) needs a dolphin striker if you're going to put a trapeze on it.

ok so what is a dolphin striker out of curiosity

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when the winds not blowin your not goin

It is a bar that extends below the mast base attached to a rod that goes from one end of the cross bar to the other. This takes the stress loads imposed by a loaded rig... at least that the basics, the true engineers can now step in and fill in the techno stuff...

Dolphin striker also is lower than the front cross bar, so if you were to sail over a dolphin, you could strike it.

It's the small vertical rod and lower horizontal rod below the cross bar in the image below:

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Marc...
1978 Hobie 16 Keoke, sail# 36 84

My first cat was a 3.5. I lived on a small narrow lake in Alaska and it was fine for tooling around in light wind. I could tack without too much worry. I weigh 200# and that was about the max for the boat. My nephew weighs 280#, we both tried to get on it and both pontoons were under water... I took it out in high winds, sheeted in, held on and leaned way out... and the lower hull started dipping below the water. I didn't pitch-pole as I was leaning back to stern, but the sail area to hull is just too small (IMHO) to trap on even if you didn't bend the crossbar due to no dolphin striker. It gave me the basics of sailing though. I now have an H16 and solo trap as often as I can get the wind to do so.