Hobart Alter
| Hobart Alter | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
Hobart Laidlaw Alter October 31, 1933 Ontario, California United States |
| Died | March 29, 2014 (aged 80) Palm Desert, California United States |
| Occupation | Sports equipment fabricator |
| Children | Three |
Hobart "Hobie" Alter (October 31, 1933 – March 29, 2014) was a surf and sailing entrepreneur and pioneer, creator of the Hobie Cat catamarans, and founder of the Hobie company.
Hobie Alter will be remembered for creating the process of the foam-and-fiberglass surfboard & his subsequent creation of the Hobie Cat catamaran sailing boat line. His label, Hobie, remains one of the top-selling surfboard brands of all time. He is also the creator of the Hobie 33 ultralight-displacement sailboat and a mass-produced radio-controlled glider, the Hobie Hawk.
During summer vacation 1950 "Hobie" hit on an idea . ""Hobie began by building 9-foot balsawood sufboards for his friends. He asked his dad to pull the Desoto out of the family's Laguna Beach, California garage, and converted it into a wood shop for his hobby.
Hobie's hobby became a business and in discussing the future with friends as a young man "Hobie" declared that he wanted to make a living without having to wear hard-soled shoes or work east of California’s Pacific Coast Highway. By “Making people a toy and giving them a game to play with it”. A couple of years later, Hobie opened up Southern California's first surf shop in Dana Point, California.
1958 Hobie and Gordon "Grubby" Clark began experiments making surfboards out of foam and fiberglass. The new boards were lighter, faster and more responsive than wooden ones. Several famous surfers surfed for the Hobie Team, including Joey Cabell, Phil Edwards, Corky Carroll, Gary Propper, Mickey Munoz, Joyce Hoffman and Yancy Spencer.
Hobie was born and raised in Ontario, California, but his family had a summer house in Laguna Beach, where Alter got into the full array of ocean sports. Initiated into surfing by Walter Hoffman, he started shaping balsa boards in the early 1950s. When the family's front yard became cluttered with the remnants of surfboard production, his father moved him off the property by buying him a lot on Pacific Coast Highway in nearby Dana Point for $1,500. That was 1953. In February 1954, with the first stage of the shop completed, Hobie Surfboards opened its doors after a total investment of $12,000. "People laughed at me for setting up a surf shop," Hobie remembers. "They said that once I'd sold a surfboard to each of the 250 surfers on the coast, I'd be out of business. But the orders just kept coming."
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