Hobie Alter Is Building a ‘Cat’ That Can Prowl the Seven Seas
In 1983, a sports columnist toted up Hobie Alter’s business accomplishments--from surfboards and surfwear to the Hobie catamaran and Hobie sailboat--and wondered in closing: “What’s next, Hobie oil tankers?”
Close.
Hobart Laidlaw Alter is ensconced these days in a concrete industrial building in San Juan Capistrano, Calif., busily at work on his newest project--a 60-foot, diesel-powered catamaran.
It’s a big boat, and while not quite in the tanker category, it will carry 3,000 gallons of diesel fuel when fully loaded.
So far, it is a one-of-a-kind boat, being built for the personal pleasure of Hobie and his family.
But the surfer-turned-entrepreneur has shown an uncanny ability over the years to turn his personal pleasures into thriving enterprises, and he is confident this $1-million venture will be no different.
So sure of that is Alter that he took the time and expense--several hundred thousand dollars of expense--to build permanent molds of the twin hulls, the two-tiered superstructure and portions of the decking.
Alter, 54, said he hasn’t tried to find a buyer or franchisee for the mold, though he allows that he “sure would like to. . . . It would help cut down the expenses.”
He has, however, had several individuals express interest in having him build one for them.
That’s how it has always been.
Alter, who grew up in Ontario, started out as a recreational surfer, spending summers at his family’s Laguna Beach cottage. His last year at Chaffey Junior College, he decided to live in Laguna year round, and began making balsa wood surfboards in his garage to help pay the rent.
He soon had more orders than his garage workshop could handle and in 1954 opened a shop and factory in Dana Point. He made and sold 200 boards that first year, 300 the next and about 400 in 1956.
In 1958, Hobie’s Surfboards in Dana Point unveiled boards made of lightweight polyurethane foam and sold 600 of them. In 1959, the same year Hollywood discovered the beach and the movie “Gidget” was released, Hobie’s sold 1,500 boards. By 1967, Alter was selling 6,000 boards a year and attracting the attention of investors interested in buying his company.
One of those potential investors asked Alter what else he could do, Alter recalls, “and I said that I had just started thinking about building a good, lightweight catamaran that one or two people could handle.
“I had an 18-foot cat at the time, but it weighed more than 600 pounds and it took six guys to drag it up the beach, then four of ‘em had to stand around on the beach because only two people could sail it.”
Art Hendrickson, a business adviser to the potential buyer who had asked Alter what else he could do, listened hard to the answer and came back several days later on his own.
“He asked if I really wanted to try it, and said that he’d handle the business end if I did.”
Alter never did sell the surfboard shop--his daughter, Paula, and oldest son, Hobie, own it now. But he and Hendrickson became partners in a new business in June, 1967.
One year, three prototypes and $70,000 later, the Hobie 14, a 14-foot, foam-and-fiberglass catamaran, hit the market. In 1971, the company--called Coast Catamaran--introduced a 16-foot catamaran and in 1972, annual sales of the Hobie 14 and Hobie 16 topped 5,500 units.
In 1976, Coleman Co. acquired Coast for $3.5 million. Alter owned 26% of Coast Catamaran when it was sold, and says the occasion marked the first time in his life he ever had any real money in hand. “All the rest of the time, everything I had went back into the businesses.”
Alter used some of the profit from his Coast shares to buy a 10% stake in a fledgling sportswear company called Ocean Pacific. He also licensed his name for another line of sportswear, teamed up with a developer in Rancho California to form Hobie/Rawlings Development Co. and became part owner of Hobie Sports Centers of Hawaii and California.
Beyond his investment activity, Alter took up golf, dirt bikes and scuba diving after the Coast sale. He uses a single-hulled boat for scuba diving and cruising nowadays, and that is what led him to his most recent task.
A mono-hull, Alter says, is not a very stable platform, either for diving or for pleasure cruising. “They roll and bounce with just a little chop (rough water) and you can’t even put dishes out or they all go crashing to the deck.”
So Hobie Alter is pursuing his vision of a better pleasure craft: a luxurious power-catamaran outfitted with the comforts of home.
He began building a full-size model of the boat in January, 1987, and by September had made the molds that are being used for the final foam-and-fiberglass components.
True to form, the boat is unusual--no wood or metal is being used in its construction, except for furnishings and trim. The entire hull and superstructure is vacuum-molded polyurethane foam sandwiched between layers of fiberglass.
The hull assembly is nearly finished now and sits in a huge shed attached to Alter’s industrial building, looking a bit like a beached whale.
Inside the building, the tanned and weathered Alter and a small crew of workers are about to start laying up the first layer of fiberglass for the main cabin.
He figures he will be ready to launch the boat by the end of 1989. In the meantime, though, there is a lot of work to do, and Hobie Alter, millionaire businessman, is right in the midst of it.
He can lay up fiberglass and handle sheets of dense foam with the best of them, and always has.
Alter says that is what he enjoys, the creating and crafting. “Business got to be a real hassle” in the late 1970s and early ‘80s, he said, because meetings with executives, salesmen and lawyers left no time for that.
“People look at Hobie and think he’s had a really easy life,” said his wife, Susan. “But he’s always worked really hard. They don’t see that part of it.”
