When I was a kid, a young windsurfer, I always wondered why the sailmaker and boardshapers comes out with new sets every year. Some years later I have started to pimp my sails with new battens, changing the luff curves or making different head shapes.
I started to write this post many weeks ago. When I returned to post it, always came out some more memories, thoughts. Now I wanted to write about the Tornado Worlds, as our sails are Mixed Worlds Champions and on the podium in open, but before that I think this post is much more relevant.
I remember the summer of 1994. We were at Lake Garda with some friends for windsurfing. This was the first time I have met with Giorgio Zuccoli. He was sitting on his cat and talking to a local guy. I haven’t understood anything but how he was changing the shape of the mainsail how he was moving around the sails, it filled me with wonder… Now, after more than 20 years it is really interesting to see as we continue his work. If someone told me this in that time, I couldn’t believe.
A lot has changed since then. I am out of windsurfing (but it looks like it comes back into my life on the design side) and I am into catamaran sailing c/a 6 years on full throttle, but that passion for developing is still on.
We make new things in different classes year by year and now I found myself, if I don’t open SMAR Azure a day, it makes me hurt physically. It became a habit to observe and analyze, observe, analyze, observe analyze…. and work it out in Azure project
We are involved in many foiling projects and some classic things as well and we have customers who are keen to have always something new to go higher and faster.
This makes me and the whole team to go and seek always of new developments, to find new ways to be faster, better. These developments must match with the highest production quality,which is a must on each sails that leaves the loft.
Now, the Tornado Worlds 2016 is over. The road to the regatta was hard, but we have learnt a lot of things (I will make a post on this regatta and the development). I mean not on design side, yes, of course we got huge experiences, but on the other side we had to face that we can do it. We are able to do these kind of developments for these really high level top sailors. I have found myself into a new way of communication, everyone knows what he wants and how to achieve that. It made a superboost to us.
Now I have totally understood why it needs to develop time-to-time, the ideas of the new 2017 Tornado sails are in my sail design library and in the next months we start to test it.
I have a supervisor, who helps me when I got stucked between two solutions/problems, or just supporting me mentally. Yes, he is Pablo Soldano, who taught me everything on sail making and sail designing.
Pablo doing this very slightly, not to tell exact things, just giving some guiding rails.
We have made a slightly bigger Code0, the Chupacabra XL, to a very well known boat (later there will be a post about this too). What took out the developing beast from me. That was the point where I have started to do what always I wanted to do. This sail together with the F16 and Tornado developments, plus the new foiling projects that we were invited to participate, gave me the answer why and when we have to develop.
…and that’s how we ending up in Providing the World with Better Sails.
