French Hobie Cat Nationals blend racing, dinner and dance party

The French Hobie Cat Nationals at Club Nautique Berrois felt like a full-on class reunion as much as a title fight. Three fleets filled Étang de Berre, near Marseille, with 22 Hobie Cat 16s, 12 Hobie Cat 14s and five Open Space catamarans over 16 feet, then the shoreline came alive again after racing with a big sailors dinner, followed by a late-night dance party that kept the Hobie crowd together long after the last finish.

The regatta ran May 23-25, 2026 as the National Hobie Cat, organized with the Association Française de Hobie Cat and listed on the Fédération Française de Voile calendar for both Hobie Cat 14 and Hobie Cat 16 national events. The local notice said the event was open to Hobie catamarans from France and abroad and built around constructed courses, raid-style courses and a freestyle leg, a mix that gave the championship more range than a standard round-the-buoys program.

The opening two days belonged to patience. Very light winds on Étang de Berre forced sailors to stay sharp on shifts, lanes and clean starts rather than rely on speed alone, but the race committee still completed three races per day. That kept pressure on every boat in the fleet and gave the championship a steady rhythm even when the breeze stayed soft.

Final results were posted across the HC14, HC16 and Open Space classes, closing a domestic event that showed the Hobie circuit still has depth in France. The Nationals also worked as a practical warm-up for the next big target on the calendar, the 2026 Hobie Cat Multi-Europeans, set for August 21-28 in Maubuisson, Carcans, at Domaine de Bombannes. That championship will use a revised format with one day for registration and measurement, then seven full days of racing.

The bigger takeaway from Berre-l'Étang was cultural as much as competitive. Hobie’s class archive has traced the Hobie Hotline back to February 1971, and this weekend showed why that history still matters: the racing, the dinner tables and the dance floor all pulled in the same direction. In a fleet that can still turn a national title into a family-and-club gathering, the Hobie scene remains socially sticky, and that is what keeps the circuit moving from one generation to the next.