anyone know what this is?

There is another one in the beach cat identity folder labeled Hawaiian cat

It's the older model (referred to as a bannana hulled) Venture 15. See the two styles of Venture 15 here.
http://www.thebeachcats.com/pictures/?g2_itemId=35089

question: why do some cats (mostly older ones) such as the venture 15 have a bar attached to the bows of the hulls?

because they were afraid the bows would fold in when the wind was at max strength and pushing the mast back and pulling the windward bow in

the hobie 14 and 16 didn't need them as their bows were so short but in 1975 nacra came out with the 5.2 that had very long bows without the bow beam. they weren't folding in so from about then designers stopped calling for them

but even nacra wasn't keen to have even longer unsupported bows on race cats than on the 5.2 and came up with bridal foils on the 5.5 and 5.8 as a way of distributing some of the load across to the other hull

they were/are still common on bigger, cheaper built cats as they save a lot of weight and cost on long heavily loaded bows

Edited by erice on Oct 03, 2011 - 05:02 AM.

thats exactly what I was wondering. Thanks