North U - North Sails hold Young 88 Clinic at Buckland’s Beach

by North Sails Media on 17 Jun 2015 An expert team of coaches from North Sails including America's Cup and Volvo veterans, World and National champions gathered to help the local Buckland’s Beach Young 88 fleet improve their sail trim and boat speed in a North U clinic.

The morning started off with Andrew Wills, Head of Sales, running through three drills all designed to increase awareness of sail trim. Each boat was paired up with a North Sails coach who took a “hands off” approach to the sailing but provided active feedback on sail trim and boat handling to ultimately increase speed.

There is a great comraderie amongst the fleet and the afternoon club racing is non-spinnaker to encourage more boats out of the dock. It was fantastic to see seven boats in the morning North U clinic, and eight in the afternoon club racing. The winter series runs fortnightly on Sundays and alternates between harbour and windward leeward courses.

The coaches also snapped worms eye view photos of the mainsails to be ASA (Advanced Sail Analyser) scanned, a technology developed by North Sails Japan and used by Olympic and America’s Cup teams. This tool allows sail set ups to be compared and also track how a sail changes over time.

This advanced technology was also used on national champion boat Y88 Raging Hormones to provide feedback to the crew on sail trim and also advance development of performance sails within the one design restricted class.

On the clinic, Andrew Wills comments 'service is one of the reasons North Sails is the World's leading Sailmaker. We love to make sure the customer's sails are set up well, and they are getting the most out of our great product.'

The team at North Sails is looking forward to continuing their relationship with the Y88 class and in the future offering the same North U clinic to other local classes and yacht clubs.