The engine room
by John Curnow, Sail-World.com AUS Editor 9 Feb 2025 13:00 PST
Chris Dare's Ambition leads the fleet heading into the final day - 2025 J/70 Australian Championship © Alex Dare, Down Under Sail
Without them we are lost. This is not about the tiny little room under the companionway stairs. Rather, it is about the things aloft both ahead and behind the stick. Yes. The rags. Only, these days they are anything but for wiping up spills. They are supreme tech.
So how does Mark Bradford of North Sails Australia see it all? "I think that North Sails has always been a technology company, and when you talk about technology everyone just goes straight to 3Di. There's also a bunch of other technology that happens in the grass roots. There are the Moths, which is 3Di, but it's dinghy tech, and it's right at the front end of sailing."
"Then there are older classes, like the Etchells, and they are a heavy keel boat, with the Dacron sail part of a strict class rule. So here the tech comes in analysing sail shapes, rig churn, and making modern sails that help those boats perform at a very high level. Same thing with the 505, again an old class, but here we're using a bit of new tech and a bit of old tech. All of them have the very same goal, and that's to get to the front."
Of course, any of these classes need people, and with North Sails the team are right there, literally. There are plenty of Class Championships, podium places, and records to handout for all, but that is not the deal with this crew. It comprises Sandy Higgins in the Five-Oh, Billy Sykes in the J/70, Noel Drennan in the Etchells, Ben Kelly with the multihulls, Alby Pratt in the TPs and Maxi 72, along with Vaughan Prentice, Aaron Cole, Andrew Parkes, and Dick Parker at countless events, then Bradford himself at numerous ocean events, as well as Rob Greenhalgh for the Moths. They are all there helping racers and officials/measurers alike when ashore, and then out there racing too. That's the key. The passion for what they do.
"The team drive the thinking and the development, literally by eating and breathing everything to do with their Class. Greenhalgh is a great example in the Moth. He's pretty much transformed how those boats perform, such as the top speeds of those boats, which were going upwind at just a click under 20 knots of boat speed, and now they're well above 20 knots."
"I believe the other day Harry Price clocked a speed getting close to 40 knots in a Moth. A lot of this is development stems from Greenhalgh and Rory Scott in England, then Tom Slingsby, as well as Iain Jensen and a lot of other sailors. Greenhalgh created a double luff that has a pretty unique way for the buttons to split instead of canvas around the mast, and in all of that as a by-product, he's been part of the mast and boat development. So yes, the first thing you need to be successful is passionate people."
"It's a huge amount of responsibility, and we take it seriously right across the business. Billy Sykes is a great example here. "He sails on the boat (they came third at the last Nationals), he organises the stock to get to the regatta, goes to the regatta, helps the clients understand their rig tune, which very much includes teams in the middle and the back of the fleet to improve, and offers support right across the board. It is very much the same with Noel Drennan, who finished in fourth at the Worlds in Brighton. So you know, it's a really long day for these guys and they understand the technology, they understand the development and how we got here, and then they bring the ideas back on how we keep pushing to move forward," added Bradford by way of explaining the larger 'family' nature of their relationships with clients and Classes.
So we just had a bunch of World Championships in the ANZ region, where the North Sails team competed, but even when they're not there, they are, as such. "Anthony Nossiter just got as close to a picket fence (string of bullets) as you can get in the 48-boat Finn fleet. Wonderful friend of the business, great sailor with Olympic history, and he is giving us feedback, as wells helping people in the boat park."
"The same sorts of things happen in B14s, Couta Boats, 420s, 470s, Skiff Championships, and Dragons. This is where our genuine international knowledge comes to the fore, and we can then disseminate this out locally."
Moving into bigger stuff, and the Caribbean 600 looms, which Bradford will be at. Yes they know all the spar designers and rig engineers, and so locally they apply the 'commonwealth' of the global knowledge pool to the Wild Oats and Black Jack campaigns (with the latter getting some tweaks right now as it turns out), as well as internationals like Comanche and Scallywag. It also stays fresh, as it were, with the Lucky (ex-Rambler) campaign, who recently took Comanche's Transat record by over an hour. This epitomises and encapsulates the power of the blue rondelle. Of course, there is also the filtering down of tech from the America's Cup, Trimaran and IMOCA fleets.
Parallels with successful F1 or Supercar teams are self-evident, and this is because design and engineering were at the coal face, and represented a large proportion of the personnel. In a recent group call amongst the North Sails team, of the 85 participants, 50 were designers. Say no more, save for the fact that it was Paul Westlake, VP of North Sails who chaired the meeting.
Ultimately, North Sails are acutely aware that you're purchasing an asset to not only last, but to deliver the goods time and time and time again. This is nigh on a mantra for them, BTW. So even if an individual loft is not across a specific Class, the group certainly is. Confidence comes in the form of a tick in the box.
So, if it is literally everything from OTB to Ocean Racer, then equally, large cruising vessels get to enjoy some of the benefits of this work. The lack of maintenance is a huge aspect here, because of the robustness of the sail itself. Taking one of these massive, heavy, fat head mains of a boom is a real task (think cranes). Less downtime and more sailing are always going to be a bonus.
If the two paragraphs above do not say approachable, then I am not sure what really could. Every time I speak with the team, their enthusiasm for what we love is boundless, and it is not just for their favoured patch, but for the whole sphere. Supermaxi one day, 40-foot cruiser the next, Tasar a day later. Smile on the dial the whole way... YeeeHaaaaaa.
Please enjoy your yachting, stay safe, and thanks for tuning into Sail-World.com
John Curnow,
Sail-World.com AUS Editor