Winter maybe upon us, but we are busier than ever here in the loft, and sailing continues.  
The loft is producing sails 20 hours a day 6 days a week at the moment, to fulfill our customers’ needs. Recent projects that we have undertaken include J Class Sails for 3 teams, TP52 sails for 6 teams (North supply all except 3 boats in the current super series), Sails for JV72, RC44 sails for 3 teams, Mills 62 Sails, and locally, Fred Barrett 35, Crusader Elliott 35ss, 18 foot skiff sails, plus loads of club race and cruising sails. On the horizon we will continue to be busy with much of the same style of work including sails for yachts such as, Vertigo, Samurai (Mari Cha 4), Hemisphere, JV72, TP 52, and Gunboat 66.

Mickey Ickert

Sally celebrates her 70th 

North U Tip

You definitely can’t win the race from the start, but you can certainly lose it. Bearing this in mind, I tend to go for low risk starts. Preferring to come off the line, clean, fast, and in contention, as opposed to trying to win an end, this can often result in an unfavourable situation. 

Part of this process is getting out early and establishing the favoured side of the course and favoured end of the line.  Once I have established which end I want to start at, my crew monitors traffic during the pre start sequence. Then based on my crews feedback I assess where the likely congestion hot spots are going to be, and avoid the carnage.  

Once the gun goes, and we are off in the front row, now the focus shifts to chipping away and achieving a good race result; a keeper.