Sails from 12,000 miles away (from photos

Originally posted by Chew my RS Is there a reason for getting your sails made 12,000 miles away?! They look good though.

Well I was the one who started that craze.

Rightly or wrongly I was very unimpressed with the carbon spars available in the UK. On the other hand I was very impressed with the rigs on the R Class in the NZ, and considered them to be potentially a good match for the then Cherub rules. I also considered that there was far better experience in NZ for cutting sails for that kind of rig.

The dominant combination in Rs (and 12s) is Fyfe/C-tech, so that was top of my list. Because there's a very close relationship between Fyfe and C-tech I considered that getting matched sails and spars from them was going to be the most likely way to get a really well matched sail and spar, and I consider the relationship between the two to be at least as important as the actual shape of the sail: I think chucking any old rag on any old mast is always going to be slow, no matter how good the individual components might be.

Finally at the time the Kiwi dollar was right down the tubes and the pound very strong. Then while I was mulling over this Mr C-tech was over in the UK for a couple of weeks and I was able to meet up and talk to him. It really wasn't a very hard decision!