North Sails win without Gaylene Mulqueen

by Peter Brady on 14 Jun 2005 North Sails claim to be the One Design Kings of the sailing world. Certainly in the Farr 40 Class and the Etchells fleet they have delivered the vast majority of the podium places over the last ten years.

Their domination of the Etchells fleet has been so strong in recent years that, just as Baron Bic’s Biro has become a generic term for a ballpoint pen, North Sails Australian Sales Manager, Lee Killingworth believes their sails are almost standard for Etchells sailors.

Australian Mid-winter Champion Rob Brown was using generics today, when he described the sailing conditions.

‘It was very soft through this series. All DC. We’ve not had the GM out of the bag.‘

What was this all about? We know DC in an AC and E-22 context but this is jargon. What does GM stand for?

‘It’s a medium-heavy weather headsail, but why it is called GM, I don’t not have a clue,’ explained the smiling regatta winner.

So we asked the man who would know.

When Australia’s Michael Coxon, the current Australian Etchells champion, was a younger sail-maker, North Sails One Design group named each new Etchells headsail with a two-letter name that distinguished different sails, which might be in development at the time.

The names were usually the designer or the sailor who commissioned the design.

Some of the very lightest weather jibs were VB’s, after legendary North American one design sailor Vince Bruin.

With a lot of talented Etchells sailors in Australia and particularly on Sydney’s Pittwater, the northern beaches North Sail loft became a very active development loft for the Big Blue group.

In 1982 when Coxon came up with a particularly fast design he was planning to use himself, he refused to call it a MC.

A senior receptionist at the North Sales Mona Vale loft offered coffee to the management team as they grappled for a name, in the light of the Coxon’s reticence.

Gaylene Mulqueen was her name, so the jib became a GM. To this day, the GM is for the North Sail’s group world wide, an Etchells headsail of choice over ten or so knots.

Coxon continues, ‘Gaylene was not a sailor, she hardly knew one end of a boat from the other, but she was very pleased with the GM model number recognition.

‘We’ve not thrown out the sail design and started again, its just been constantly tweaked season after season, and we’ve kept the name.

‘In 1997-98 a North Sails light weather jib with a zero to ten knot range became the DC, named after one of the better known Etchells sailors from San Diego.’

With a strong and successful North Sails presence in the Etchells fleets over many years, these two sails are the ones most ‘seen’ on the water in Etchells fleets around the world.

Preparing for the 2005 San Francisco Etchells Worlds Rob Brown is working hard on his sail program.

He believes strong breezes on even the sheltered part of San Francisco Bay will mean his GM will be doing the work, while his DC stays in the bag.