Hobart Alter

Hobart "Hobie" Laidlaw Alter (October 31, 1933 – March 29, 2014) was an American surf and sailing entrepreneur and pioneer, creator of the Hobie Cat catamarans, and founder of the Hobie company. He created the Hobie 33 ultralight-displacement sailboat and a mass-produced radio-controlled glider, the Hobie Hawk.

Early life Hobart Laidlaw Alter 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.

Career Surfing and skateboarding business During a summer vacation in 1950 Alter began by building 9-foot balsawood surfboards for his friends. He asked his dad to pull the DeSoto out of the family's Laguna Beach, California, garage, and converted the garage into a woodshop for his hobby. 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 in 1953, his father moved him off the property by buying him a lot on Pacific Coast Highway in nearby Dana Point for $1,500. A couple of years later, Alter opened up Orange County's first surf shop in Dana Point, California. 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," Alter remembered. "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."

Alter hired other board-builders, including Phil Edwards and Reynolds Yater. With the introduction of foam-and-fiberglass technology, Alter brought Joe Quigg (surfer) over from Hawaii to help keep up with demand. Then came the high-volume production shapers like Ralph Parker and Terry Martin, guys who have shaped hundreds of thousands of surfboards over the years. Other Hobie shapers included Dewey Weber, Mickey Munoz, Corky Carroll, Don Hansen. Bruce Jones and the Patterson brothers.

Surfing Alter was a surfing competitor in his younger days. He won the second Brooks Street contest in Laguna in 1954 and placed third and fourth at the Makaha International Surfing Championships in 1958 and 1959. He achieved success as a tandem surfer, placing second in the event at Makaha in 1962. Alter made the Guinness Book of World Records in 1964, surfing the wake of a motorboat 26 miles from Long Beach to Catalina Island.

Awards and honors In 1983, Alter received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.

Alter was inducted into the National Sailing Hall of Fame in 2011.

In 2018, the city of Dana Point honored Hobie Alter with a Hobie Alter Memorial in the form of a 27-foot high life-size cast bronze statue/sculpture titled "Hobie Riding the Wave of Success" by Bill Limebrook, which depicts Hobie Alter "hiking out" in his Hobie Cat 14. It was the inaugural feature of the city's Watermen's Plaza, followed by nine life-size statues/sculptures of famous Dana Point watersport athletes, filmmakers, artists, and entrepreneurs.