North Sails have some big small boat and skiff results

by North Sails on 9 Mar 2017 “It’s been a super-busy season and there are still some big regattas to come, from Optimists right up to Young 88s, but we’ve seen some really good results so far,” says Derek Scott, manager of North New Zealand One Design team.

In the Optimist fleet, young Murrays Bay sailor Seb Menzies is currently top of the national rankings, with Wakatere’s George Lee Rush and Josh Hyde ranked third and fourth. Menzies has won each of the three ranking regattas so far, with just one major ranking regatta to go — the Nationals at Napier over Easter.

All three sailors use North sails, with Menzies using a cross-cut MZX design and Rush and Hyde using a radial cut. The MZX range comes in two sizes — the MZX4 and the MZX5 — with the 5 slightly more full for heavier sailors.

'A lot of it comes down to personal preference, and we use a different fabric for the radial and the cross-cut sails,' Derek says. 'While many overseas sailors are using cross-cut sails, we have kept the radial range going and developed it as a lot of Kiwi sailors prefer it, as the sails are a bit stronger and keep their shape a bit better.'

Derek says competition is expected to be close at the nationals, after which the top five ranked sailors qualify for the world championships, to be held this year in Thailand.

Elsewhere, in the 3.7 class, defending champion Hamish Hall-Smith, using a North sail, finished second at this year’s nationals, sailed at Charteris Bay on Lyttelton Harbour, while Ben Morrison managed to fight off defend champion Luke ‘Colt’ O’Connell at the OK Dinghy nationals at Worser Bay, in a close series which came down to the last race.

'Eight out of the top ten sailors in that fleet have our sails, so we’re very strong in that fleet,' says Derek. 'Dan Bush, our service manager, has sailed OKs for many years and has a lot of input into the design.'

A group of Kiwi sailors is heading to Barbados for the OK worlds in May, and Derek says the loft will be building several new sails for that event.

In the Sunburst nationals, held at Auckland’s Wakatere Boating Club in January, Nick and Flinn Olson came third on countback with a set of North sails, and young sailor Dylan Taylor finished third in the Paper Tiger nationals in the Marlborough Sounds.

Lincoln Fraser, sailing with a full set of North sails, recently won the Auckland Etchells champs from North Sails, sales and marketing manager Andrew Wills, with the class’s nationals coming up in early April.

North Sails also featured strongly at the Young 88 nationals, which were hotly contested as always.

'We made quite a few new sails for that — we had four new 3Di genoas come into the country to be built here,' he says.
Winner Mark Bond on Slipstream had a new North genoa, while second-placed Skitzo (David Hazard) had a North spinnaker, and War Machine (Mike Leyland) and Undercover (Edward Massey), who tied for third, both sailed with full North wardrobes.

Several Kiwi 18 foot skiffs with NZ North Sails were also in action at the JJ Giltinan series on Sydney Harbour, the class’s premier championship, in late February. New Zealand champion Yamaha, sailed by David McDiarmid, Matt Steven and Brad Collins, finished a creditable third, winning four out of the seven races and was a top performer in fresh conditions, ahead of another Kiwi crew on C-Tech (Alex Vallings).

 

Go North. Go Beyond.

Sail Loft 217 Archers Road Wairau Valley Auckland New Zealand Sales Office Unit 3, 23b Westhaven Drive Freemans Bay Auckland New Zealand +64 9 359 5999 sales@nz.northsails.com Update your Email Preferences | Unsubscribe from NORTH eNews | Forward to a Friend