North Sails showcase new loft on Shore but retain Westhaven presence

by Richard Gladwell, Sail-World.com on 29 Jul 2016 North Sails NZ have opened a new loft in Archers Road on Auckland's North Shore. The move is the fourth for the near 40year iconic sailmaker, and the design and layout of the new loft represents a marked break with sailmaking traditions and practices.

Although the new loft is slightly smaller than the former Pakenham Street loft, it uses a unique more flexible layout to maximise space and is much more efficient.

For customer convenience, Norths have opened a sales and design office in Westhaven Drive for drop-off and pick-up of repairs, and discussions on new sails.

At the Archers Road loft, each of the major divisions has their own entrance, so sails being dropped off or picked up can be handled in or out of their own loft. Similarly for sailcloth deliveries which come through their own delivery door into the area containing storage racks and the cutting table.

'In the old loft there was only one main entrance and all sails and cloth came through reception, and across the loft floor which was hugely disruptive,' explains North Sails Hayden Whitburn.

'One Design customers, for instance, can also come directly into their loft which is a much more personalised approach than traipsing across the main loft to get to the one-design area,' he adds.

A raised one-metre high loft floor, built by a team led by Joey Allen and AJ Kearney, is the principal feature of the new loft. The floor has been designed with several trenches across and through it, as well as a trench around the perimeter. In effect, the loft floor becomes a huge sailmaking table, rather than a floor.

The trenches allow the loft floor to be broken up into sections. Sailmakers can now work standing up for much of the time rather than having to spend most of their working day on their knees, and the attendant health issues later in life. Standing up is a much more comfortable working position and avoids long term damage to the sailmakers knees.

The other benefit of the trenches is that they have been designed in such a way that sewing machines can also be wheeled into the centre of the floor if required, or positioned where needed around the loft to work most efficiently - dragging of heavy sails to a fixed sewing machine is a thing of the past.

Some larger machines are located in pits in the loft floor. These sewing machines, used for finishing moulded sails, or assembling panel sails, rotate in ring frames developed by parent company North Technology. There are other pits in the floor allowing access below or to create a stand-up

The sight of bags of sails dotted all around the loft floor awaiting pickup or delivery is also a thing of the past with a rack/shelving system dominating one wall of the loft, accessible using a forklift.

As with the Pakenham Street loft, there is a separate one design loft, capable of handling all sails from Optimists to Young 88 keelboats.

Like the main floor below, the one-design loft is dominated by a one-metre high floor/table which again allows the sail makers to work standing up or on the floor, in the traditional way. Again the floor is broken with trenches which can either be used for access, have sewing machines positioned in the best position on the floor, or have inserts fitted to turn the loft into one large working floor.

As with the main loft floor the space under the false floor has been utilised for storage, with sails being worked on stored underneath, or with specialist tools and sail hardware kept underneath in bins.

Staying in touch with what is happening on the loft floor is facilitated by the multi-level interior in the Archers Road loft with the design office, lunch room, and one-design sections all looking over the main loft floor in an atrium-like effect.

For owners and clients based on the City side, North Sails are maintaining a presence close to Westhaven marina for easy drop-off and collection. A key feature of the new loft and North Sails operation is a new pickup truck complete with its own crane, allowing sails to be picked up from the North Sails Westhaven office or other marinas, and taken straight to the Archers Road loft - and then delivered back when required - all with a one or two man team.

From the truck, the sails go into the storage rack via a fork hoist, have the required work done on them on the floor and then get returned to North's Westhaven office or the boat.

'We think the Westhaven office and pickup service from the boat will be popular with cruisers as well as racers,' says Andrew Wills. 'Typically the cruisers don't have transport and getting sails anywhere to be checked and serviced is a mission. Now they can wander along the road for a chat and we can pick up the action from there.'

For those wishing to order new sails or just shoot the breeze, there is a sales and design team based at Westhaven headed up by Andrew Wills. They are backed up by a second design team at the Archers Road loft, headed up by Burns Fallow.

The Westhaven office is very casual with sailors and clients being able to walk in off the street and straight into the office for a quick discussion on their way or from the marina, or a quick walk along the road if they work in the City.