Hobie Cat!

 I got a new sailboat!  Its a Catamaran, and is 16 ft long and wicked fast.  Made by Hobie.
I've painted it, and figured out a way to raise the mast just by myself and finally I got my camera out and took some pictures of it sitting at my brother's place to make a blog post about it.
First off, the mast is aluminum and 26 ft long, so it is quite difficult to raise unless you use a mechanical advantage.  I made up a system using a yolk on a stick, a line and a trucker's hitch, which allows me to use the line like a 3 to 1 purchase after the mast is raised a little, and that pulls the mast upright.

 With the mast up, I can put the sails on, and they are a nice set of sails.  The main and jib both have battens, so the sail shape can be very nice, but I've been having a bit of trouble getting the jib to be tight enough while sailing, so I'm learning that these boats aren't really designed for going close to the wind.

 When I got it, it had an old trampoline, but came with a new one in the box, so I've replaced that and used Amsteel for the line, and that brought me to a color scheme of blue and orange.  I liked that, so I painted the rudders orange to match.

Orange is the color that many rudders are for super fast racing boats, you can see an example

An Update!
I took it out sailing in the bay today and my mom snapped a few photos, here is one: