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Posted: June 8th, 2009, 2:07am CEST
1984 December - 2009 December |
The Global speed chase goes to Oz
As the publicity aspect of Speed Sailing began to ramp up,
we were told to prepare for the trials at Woodman’s Point, just south of Perth, West Australia.
The local weather pattern was perfect for ...
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Posted: January 14th, 2009, 9:22am CET
2009 January - 2009 January |
Equatorial Equinox1977
The Seminole was a thirty-eight foot Atkins designed
double ended cutter, sure footed and steady on, and not fast to weather. But to
weather we would go, because we were on our way to Ahe’ in the ...
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Posted: January 14th, 2009, 9:22am CET
2009 January - 2009 January | Equatorial Equinox1977The Seminole was a thirty-eight foot Atkins designed double ended cutter, sure footed and steady on, and not fast to weather. But to weather we would go, because we were on our way to Ahe’ in the Tuamotu Archipelego to mee...
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Posted: January 13th, 2009, 7:24am CET
2009 January - 2009 January |
As a small
boy, I had no idea was going to live a life centered on the sea and sailing. My
maternal grandparents were solid land people, and lived on the same land for
twenty-five years before I was around them. Normally I knew only ...
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Fetched: May 27th, 2008, 6:50pm CEST
1978 January - 1978 January |
New Years was crazy. At that time, New Zealand had
pub laws that said closing was 10:00 P.M. on weekdays and 11:00 on Saturday
nights. There was an exception for New Years to allow them to stay open to
12:30. The Duke was packed and there were...
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Fetched: May 23rd, 2008, 11:26pm CEST
1977 December - 1978 January |
I had to go back farther.
Last week I got an e-mail from an old friend. He said he had
been on Google looking for things from his past, when he came across ‘Barry’s Corner’.
He was stoked to find me after thirty years an...
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Fetched: June 2nd, 2007, 3:14am CEST
1984 October - 1984 October | The collection of wing masts and odd rigs and boats had also
grown. Every player had a new toy. Peter Bridgman, a sailmaker from Italy,
showed up with a truck full of hard wings all sponsored by a clothing company.
Gary Efferding was there from Fl...
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Fetched: June 1st, 2007, 1:31am CEST
1984 October - 1984 October |
I want to go back to 1983 because I have some good pictures
of things that even today are pretty far out there. I just found these pictures
in a box and think that they are actually pretty relevant to what we are all
trying to do now, if for n...
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Fetched: May 19th, 2007, 11:43am CEST
1984 September - 1984 October | We were so ready for Weymouth
this time. We had everything AND the kitchen sink. This was going to be big
single event effort. We would ship the Wings and all the gear by baggage in
custom bags with heavy foam. The Wings were sixteen feet long and...
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Fetched: March 13th, 2007, 2:49am CET
1984 August - 1984 September |
When we got done with the trip to Honk Kong, we began to
make plans to bring the rest of the year into line. The two big issues for
travel would be ISPO in Munich in September, and
Weymouth in
October. ISPO (International Sports Products Or...
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Fetched: March 7th, 2007, 11:02pm CET
1984 July - 1984 August | The summer of 1984 was beautiful in all respects. There was
lots of work to do, we were sailing every day, and were feeling the beginnings
of the total travel work life. It’s crazy to start from never going anywhere to
being on the road for ...
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Fetched: February 9th, 2007, 4:33pm CET
1984 April - 1984 July |
When we returned to Maui,
we were still pretty blissfully unaware that we had blown it so bad. The Lee
Spider was still waiting to be seen, the Surf magazine article was a ways off,
and we were re-grouping in Wing-world after doing nothing for a...
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Fetched: January 28th, 2007, 8:19am CET
1984 April - 1984 April |
Our speed trial effort was partially sponsored by the town
government of Sete. We were put up in one of the fine hotels in the town, and
knew it was going to be a big show. The day we flew in, the airlines lost our
gear in Paris,
and we s...
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Fetched: January 26th, 2007, 8:32pm CET
1984 April - 1984 April | Now we had done it. It was a Pandora’s Box of stupid moves
followed by “Well? What do we do now?”
With a simple stroke of foolish bravura, we were behind and
didn’t even know it. The real market was about to find ou...
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Fetched: January 9th, 2007, 9:15am CET
1984 February - 1984 February | That whole spring had been filled with massive highs from everything
that was going on with us and around us. Malte Simmer, Craig Maisonville, David Ezzy, Fred Haywood, Mike Eskimo, Brian
Carlstrom and Alex Aguera were all captured on film by Arna...
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Fetched: January 7th, 2007, 1:28am CET
1984 February - 1984 April | It was April 1st (appropriate). Arnaud was in his prime. We
were all tight after the Holland
week of indulgence, and he was around and ready to help promote himself and
Neil Pryde. He decided we needed to have a big press event to show off the new...
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Fetched: January 7th, 2007, 1:28am CET
1983 September - 1983 October |
As the date of departure loomed, we were working until the wee hours right up until the day we left, we still barely had
anything together. There was a sailing Wing that we got on the water one more
time, and nothing broke, so we thought w...
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Fetched: January 7th, 2007, 1:28am CET
1983 September - 1983 October | ...
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Fetched: January 5th, 2007, 11:45pm CET
1984 February - 1984 February |
In order to make the rotated sail hang properly, we decided
to disconnect the head attachment from the sleeve and spread the load into the
top of the sail. We never had ‘pin head’ sails from the beginning, but the
sleeve had alway...
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Fetched: December 30th, 2006, 8:21pm CET
1983 November - 1984 February |
While we were
cruising in Europe, things hadn’t stagnated on Maui.
Rick Kinser (‘Sky’) was diligently working away on an idea we had thrown around
just before leaving. We knew that we could make sails for normal masts be...
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Fetched: December 30th, 2006, 8:21pm CET
1983 November - 1984 February | ...
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Fetched: December 12th, 2006, 12:04am CET
1983 October - 1983 November |
I remember Fred saying something around the time the event
began. Something like, “I hit the limit on my card. How much cash do you have?”
Now it was seven days later, we broke the record, had some
fun, and we couldn&rsq...
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Fetched: November 24th, 2006, 5:09pm CET
1983 October - 1983 October | What a party! The Weymouth Yacht Club sits on the side of a hill on the other side of the harbor. It’s a very small place, but no one cared. There was ample spirits flowing, lots of smiles and laughter, and you would have thought that everyone ...
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Fetched: September 19th, 2006, 1:56am CEST
1983 October - 1983 October |
We had been doing better and better with every run. Fred was
getting used to the way this wild new rig was working, and we had refined and
tuned everything so he was as comfortable as he could be. His wound was
healing, finally, and the c...
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Fetched: August 13th, 2006, 6:11pm CEST
1983 October - 1983 October |
The trapeze. What did it do for us? It’s kind of hard to say
because the first days of real sailing we were still figuring it out. .
Dimitrje was totally into it. The logic was good. I was a long time wire man in
5O5 and Flying Dutchman...
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Fetched: August 3rd, 2006, 3:41pm CEST
1983 October - 1983 October |
The first days of competition were anything but that. There
was a lot of milling around working on gear, and everyone was in some mode of
preparation. There was an amazing assortment of craft, and very few
windsurfers. And most of the windsurf...
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Fetched: July 25th, 2006, 12:19am CEST
1983 October - 1983 October |
The plan was to drive the Traffic to Roskof,
France, and get on the ferry
for Plymouth, in southern England. We had
cabin passage, and that totally added to the adventure of the whole thing. I
had never been to England,
and to arrive by sea ...
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Fetched: July 16th, 2006, 8:00am CEST
1983 October - 1983 October | Half the time we were in Brest, the weather was not cooperating for
anything like speed. The setting is beautiful, the people were gracious, and the
organization and running of the event was excellent. We were having a good
time, but not going fa...
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Fetched: July 12th, 2006, 10:50am CEST
1983 October - 1983 October |
Everyone in the group had plenty to do to be ready for the
opening day. All the sailors were scrambling to make their wings into
functioning reality. And there was no shortage of demands either. Each sailor
thought they were most important...
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Fetched: July 8th, 2006, 7:14pm CEST
1983 October - 1983 October |
When we landed in Brest,
the advance group (Geoffrey and Fred) met us at the airport with a large
Renault Traffic, a standup van that we would get to know quite well in the next
days. Everything we had fit inside, even the long Wing masts. Th...
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Fetched: July 3rd, 2006, 1:17pm CEST
1983 September - 1983 October |
As the date of departure loomed, we were working until the wee hours right up until the day we left, we still barely had
anything together. There was a sailing Wing that we got on the water one more
time, and nothing broke, so we thought ...
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Fetched: June 30th, 2006, 3:55pm CEST
1983 September - 1983 September |
We hadn’t even gotten to see the sail working much. We were
so amazed that it worked at all that we didn’t have time to get on the binos
and study. Instead we were becoming Wing rebuilders. And the mast was getting
heavier all the...
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Fetched: June 27th, 2006, 10:31am CEST
1983 September - 1983 September |
With the total failure of the two masts I quickly got to
know Dimitrje over the phone. First, we tried to figure out why it had failed, and
then we could fix it. Apparently, the tool that was used to cut the groove in
the tube for th...
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Fetched: June 24th, 2006, 11:30am CEST
1983 September - 1983 September |
There was lots of other stuff still going on all around us,
but suddenly the entire focus of our work was The Wing. That’s what Dimitrje
called it and there it was in big letters down the side. The Wing. Up until
that time, a gray Ampro ...
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Fetched: June 18th, 2006, 9:07pm CEST
1983 August - 1983 September | By August, Fred was fully into serious training of every kind. Having been a world record swimmer along with Mark Spitz, Charlie Hickock, and Don Schollander on the 400m individual relay team at Stanford, Fred knew what conditioning and training did...
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Fetched: June 18th, 2006, 9:07pm CEST
1983 July - 1983 August |
The most interesting thing happening was a story that
Geoffrey heard was about Ken Winner. He found this guy in Utah that was making a miracle wing mast out
of exotic carbon fibre. His name is
Dimitrje Milovich, and his resume was alread...
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Fetched: June 16th, 2006, 11:57am CEST
1983 July - 1983 September | The Gorge Pro-Am was a great racing event that was attended
by most of the top professionals of the time. Phil McGain, Ken Winner, Nevin
Sayre, Anders Bringdal, and a bunch of other Europeans were in attendance.
Geoffrey went there to be involved...
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Fetched: June 13th, 2006, 9:12am CEST
1983 May - 1983 June |
With the development cycle for production designs taking on
its own life, we were still struggling to keep the whole show floating. We still
hadn’t seen any return from the work on the TriRadials, and the local sail
business was a consta...
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Fetched: June 11th, 2006, 6:30am CEST
1982 December - 1983 March |
Very shortly after Geoffrey got back from Hong
Kong we had to ramp up almost everything we were doing. We would
soon find out that our relationship was sort of like being chained to a big
bear in the forest. We would be protected as long ...
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Fetched: June 4th, 2006, 8:30pm CEST
1981 November - 1982 March |
Neil Pryde soon turned over all relations with us to Geoff
Cornish. Together we would plot and plan how to make the most out of the Hawaii connection. Geoff was only about twenty seven, and had
done some very creative marketing in his lead up t...
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Fetched: May 31st, 2006, 8:15am CEST
1981 October - 1981 October |
We were thinking now about making sails in Hong
Kong that would have the MauiSails brand. What a dream, but it was
a good dream. Geoffrey’s brother, Randy, worked for Ogilvey and Mather, the
huge Madison Avenue ad agency. He was the ac...
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Fetched: May 28th, 2006, 12:32pm CEST
1981 September - 1981 October |
By now it had become apparent that the island couldn’t have
too many places to buy gear. More people were getting into the sailing, and
more and more visitors from far away places were finding their way around the
back of 111 Hana Highw...
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Fetched: May 22nd, 2006, 2:25am CEST
1981 August - 1981 September |
Over the winter of 1981-1982 it got totally nuts. Every day
was amazing. We were adventure sailing on the channels, doing long speed runs
in the open ocean, and trying everything we could imagine. Maui wasn’t
the place to be building ...
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Fetched: May 17th, 2006, 6:25pm CEST
1981 May - 1981 July |
One of the great things that happened during 1981 was the
first organized prize money race, the creation of Arnaud de Rosnay. It was called “Speed Crossing”, and incorporated his
concept of using natural land masses as ‘...
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Fetched: May 13th, 2006, 1:17pm CEST
1981 March - 1981 May |
In the spring of 1981, Hoyle came back with a small crew of
officials, a few new boards of his own, and Jaap, with his tiny little winged
tail rocket and big round looking sail. Without asking permission or getting
the necessary permi...
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Fetched: May 8th, 2006, 8:18am CEST
1981 January - 1981 March |
We were really having fun now. The loft and the spacious
empty basement had become a hangout, a laboratory, a toy shop, and one of the
greatest party venues ever. Our goal was rapidly shifting as the windsurf bu...
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Fetched: May 7th, 2006, 5:16pm CEST
1980 September - 1981 January |
After the PanAm Cup the energy for development was huge. We
had to hire more and more people to make the sails, and the loft was running
about twenty hours a day. We began to make almost everything we needed. We got
aluminum, and bent boom...
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Fetched: May 7th, 2006, 5:16pm CEST
1980 July - 1980 August |
We had heard about this World Cup thing. It was a wide open
regatta for all kinds of boards and sails. It was also a huge social event for
the whole sport. People would be coming from all over the world, and we knew we
had to be there. Mos...
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Fetched: May 3rd, 2006, 12:11am CEST
1980 June - 1980 July |
The year 1980 was a wild ride for MauiSails. Not only were
we getting into building windsurfing sails, we were also getting into learning how to
windsurf ourselves. The trips to Lanikai brought us into contact with so many good sailors,
an...
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Fetched: April 28th, 2006, 3:15am CEST
1980 May - 1980 June |
The following morning we went
around to Sigi’s place and picked him up for our great test. Off we went to the
north shore of the lake to an area where there was mostly cliffs and at best,
rough trails to the shore. Sigi actually ...
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Fetched: April 27th, 2006, 3:08am CEST
1980 April - 1980 May |
One of the primary winter
residents in Lanikai was a well known German ski and sailing instructor from
Lago de Garda, named Sigfried Hoffman. He had a house right on the beach, and
along with his girlfriend, Gabriella Schmidtberger, held c...
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Fetched: April 26th, 2006, 7:55am CEST
1980 January - 1980 March | In the later part of 1979, some young guys started coming into the loft to get their windsurfing sails repaired. Both Geoffrey and I had contact with windsurfing before, but neither of us had done it much, and there was really no one doing it on ...
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Fetched: April 24th, 2006, 1:36am CEST
1979 March - 1980 January |
The first months in the history of Spanier & Bourne
Sailmakers were a hectic blur of sailing, working to finish the functioning
loft, and trying to find a place to live. Meanwhile, the word was out in
Lahaina. There was a sailmaker wor...
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Fetched: April 24th, 2006, 1:36am CEST
1980 January - 1980 February | One of my favorite jobs was working for my friend, Bernard Moitessier, and being able to make sails for the Joshua, his round the world voyaging machine. I had always corresponded by snail mail since I started building my boat. We would write bac...
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Fetched: April 21st, 2006, 9:09am CEST
1978 December - 1979 February | The next step was to organize a place to work. I had no experience with greater Maui. The first visit was all from the offshore perspective, no car, no real exploration. Now we had to find a place big enough for a loft, get machines, tools, and mate...
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Fetched: April 19th, 2006, 6:30pm CEST
1978 January - 1978 December | In New Zealand the work shifted to boat reconstruction. There I was involved with restoring a seventy-six foot Alden schooner called Constellation. The job was huge, the months crept up on us, and so did winter. We had totally rebuilt cabin tops,...
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Fetched: April 18th, 2006, 10:49pm CEST
1976 January - 1977 November | That was the beginning of the onboard sailmaking experiment that would support me all across the Pacific. In Manzanillo, Tenecatita, and Acapulco, I was able to do big jobs for people, usually right on their own boats. We set sail from Acapulco d...
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Fetched: April 18th, 2006, 10:49pm CEST
1973 November - 1975 January | The Seminole was tight and dry and soon in a slip at the Golden Gate Yacht Club docks on the City Front. It was a tough winter, with lots of nasty storms, and the docks were closest to the Bay and it was rough as being at sea. But she was a comforta...
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Fetched: April 18th, 2006, 10:49pm CEST
1969 October - 1973 October | With around $1,200.00 worth of garage door spring wire, chicken wire, heavy dunnage lumber, cheap plywood, and some graded sand and Portland cement, Claudette and I were able to loft, build molds, lay up mesh, and have a hull plastered and finished ...
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Fetched: April 18th, 2006, 10:49pm CEST
1968 January - 1969 September | One of the blessings of working with Hank was his totally open minded and positive attitude about everything. When he hired another young guy named Michael Richardson, to do sail repairs, he had no idea that it would lead to his sailmaking shop beco...
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Fetched: April 18th, 2006, 10:49pm CEST
1960 January - 1968 January | After years of active dinghy racing and high level competition, I found myself regularly crewing for Hank Jotz. He was one of the top racers at the sailing club, and a fledgling sailmaker. It was great to crew for someone who really knew racing and ...
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Fetched: April 18th, 2006, 10:49pm CEST
1957 March - 1960 December | From the time I was about eleven years old, all I did was dream about boats and sailing. An old family friend had a thirty-six foot sloop that they raced on San Francisco Bay, and one day my father and I were asked to go along. The owner was look...
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