Southern Spars - From The Volvo to the Bike track and a quick Cruiser

by Sail-World.com on 24 Oct 2017 Southern Spars have rolled a host of interest projects covering their core business of sparmaking and rigging for yachts ranging from superyachts and top maxis to the Olympic classes.

On the Composite Engineering side they have produced a new improved version of their Olympic Cycle wheel, which won the 2017 World Championship. And they have created a carbon prototype for a washing machine drum - at a massive cost saving!

Volvo fleet’s final preparations for first leg

Leg 1 of the Volvo Ocean Race from Alicante to Lisbon via the Atlantic island of Porto Santo is a gruelling 1,450-mile test of crews and boats. And Southern Spars fleet build and service supremo, Lance Manson has been on hand as the teams get ready to take on the challenge.

Southern Spars has supplied identical masts to all the boats, which will also be using ECsix rigging from fellow North Technology Group company Future Fibres.

This is the ultimate blue-water test and the Southern Spars service team has been diligently checking every detail as the countdown to the starting gun builds the excitement and the tension.

More than good looks

The Southern Spars rigged Hetairos, which is currently undergoing an upgrade, is more than she seems. Beneath the sleek good looks of her traditional cutter design is a carbon-hulled high performance machine that delivers incredible speed.

Now the power to weight ratio that clocked nearly 26 knots on her maiden transatlantic crossing is about to be enhanced further. Southern Spars’ service and maintenance division, RigPro, is currently completing a conversion project to a square head sailing plan that will make this 197-foot ketch even faster.

Hetarios will be a boat to watch – if you can keep up.

Fisher & Paykel makes big savings with Southern Spars prototype

When Fisher & Paykel wanted a prototype part for a new washing machine design they were facing very expensive tooling and construction costs for the conventional injection-moulded method. So Southern Spars Head of Materials and Process Engineering, Chris Hickey, oversaw building the part out of carbon fibre for an incredible 96% saving!

Chris said, “We’re always excited to take on projects outside our standard product range. I’m pleased that we could satisfy the brief and significantly reduce product development costs for Fisher & Paykel. It really shows the versatile skills of the entire team at Southern Spars to deliver on a challenge like this.”

Fisher & Paykel Product Development Senior Technical Leader, Richard Wong, was similarly pleased, saying: “The prototype part has been performing exactly the way we had hoped.”

Christmas comes early for NZ cyclists

The UCI Track Cycling World Cup series, which starts in Manchester, England will attract the world’s best riders, and when the NZ Men’s Sprint Team lines up on November 10th they’re going to be looking for every advantage they can get.

So you can imagine the excitement when the team’s Sprint Coach unwrapped a special parcel from Southern Spars containing a new batch of our revolutionary wheels. Stiffer, lighter and clocking up blistering times, these are the proven game-changers that have reinvented the wheel.

For more on Southern Spars latest projects and news see their website or Facebook