R E G N e HA d i C s E n a e c O GAM n i e
d a M – Hobie
In the late 1960s the Hobie Cat Company was the largest manufacturer of small catamarans in the world. As the Hobie Catamaran sailboat business was booming, Hobie outgrew its San Juan Capistrano facility in 1973 and added a distribution facility in Irvine. In 1976 the Coleman Company purchased the thennamed Coast Catamaran Corporation and decided to consolidate production and distribution so in 1978 Hobie sold the Irvine facility and purchased a property at the end Oceanside Blvd, which at that time was a lonely 4-lane highway that dead-ended at a dirt field and didn’t yet go through to Melrose Drive or connect to Bobier. The location was important because it was adjacent to a railroad freight siding (now beside the Sprinter tracks from Oceanside to Escondido) where Hobie could make railcar shipments of sailboats to dealers across the USA. The three buildings on the property and were designed and built specifically for manufacturing and distributing fiberglass sailboats. In May of 1979 Hobie made the move from Irvine to
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Oceanside with all staff wearing their red transition t-shirts and most of the staff started moving from Orange County to North San Diego. By 1989 the sailboat market had declined and Coleman sold Coast Catamaran to a private owner and the Oceanside Blvd property to the City of Oceanside. Hobie leased the two smaller manufacturing buildings and a small portion of the larger admin and warehouse building for office space. In 1995 Hobie got another group of owners and the boat business began to grow again. Since then, Hobie Kayaks have replaced Catamarans as its main product, and production has transitioned from fiberglass to plastic with five large rotational molding ovens on the property that produce molded plastic kayaks 24 hours a day. To meet demands, Hobie Cat added two
Summer 2021 | www.oceansidechamber.com