Windsurfing rig designer Barry Spanier has
come full circle. Back in the late 70s on the
island of Maui, he launched a sail brand that,
for a while, lay forgotten until a twist of fate
gave it the wake up call. Now Maui Sails
lives again and it’s even more active than it
was in its first incarnation.
Barry Spanier has been around windsurfing and
windsurfing rigs for longer than most. The Maui
Sails loft gave rise to a sail making partnership
with Jeff Bourne called ‘Spanier & Bourne’ which
was the cutting edge (excuse the pun) of sailmaking
at the time. It wasn’t very long before they were
attracting the attention of some of the big names. In
the days when windsurfing was big money, sail and
board brands had the spending power to put big
bucks into research and development. By the mideighties,
speed was dominant and the big thing was
breaking speed records. Everyone wanted to go
fast, faster than a catamaran named ‘Crossbow II’
which had held the World Speed Sailing record for a
little too long. At that time Barry was working with
Neil Pryde making sails for Patti Whitcomb, Fred
Heywood and other Pryde sponsored speed sailors.
The battle for speed supremacy was vital. ‘He who
goes fastest, sell most sails’ was the thinking and
the two lofts that were up against each other most
of all were Neil Pryde, with Barry Spanier and Maui
Sails, and Gaastra whose designers were Geoff
Magnum and Chuck Stahl of Magnum Force.
These guys would be shipped to Weymouth, put up
at the Portland Heights hotel, they’d have
Winnebagos on the beach and presumably every
facility they needed. It was as close to stardom as
you could hope for. But there was another issue
here. While Pryde supported the RAF (Rotating
Symmetrical Foil) or cam-less sail, Gaastra were
using camber inducers. That was the public view of
it. But it should be remembered that Gaastra also
owned the Camber patent which meant that all
other sail makers had to pay commission on their
use. If Pryde could prove that RAF sails were every
bit as fast if not faster than cambers, then they’d be
quids in. As it turned out, when the World Speed
sailing record did finally fall, it went to Frenchman
Pascal Maka at Sotavento who was sailing – yes,
you’ve guessed it - Gaastra.
After speed came Dunkerbeck for whom Barry
designed sails like the Combat Wave and the World
Cup Race ranges, which ensured Bjorn’s place on
the winner’s podium on a regular basis.
GAASTRA YEARS
When Spanier and Pryde parted, Barry ended up
with a bunch of top sailors working for the
‘opposition’. ‘The Team’, as it became known,
turned Gaastra’s middling fortunes into success.
After a few years Gaastra had made it’s comeback
and suddenly the Team was out in the cold again.
Their contract with Gaastra was reviewed, what
Team members saw being offered didn’t sit well so
they said ‘no thank you’ and left.
The question was what to do next. The Team was a
pretty unique phenomenon that combined design,
development, marketing, promotion as well as a
successful race team. About the only thing the Team
didn’t do was manufacture. So they were capable of
doing the whole job more or less but they were also
capable of taking over virtually completely.
Presumably other lofts look at the Team and thought
‘here’s a real opportunity for the tail to wag the dog’
and stayed well clear. So the Team’s options were
limited and in the end they decided to do the only
thing that they could and that was start their own
loft. Barry Spanier looked around and there was his
own brand, Maui Sails, right where he had left
it. It was time to start afresh. In conversation
with Mark Kasprowicz, Barry Spanier
explained that far from being easy, the Team
had to start from scratch.
We had nothing to start with. All the work we had
done had been for Gaastra. We had a joint
venture going with Gaastra so we were
responsible for product development, brand
management, the team, the promotion,
everything. The Team was responsible for that.
That was me and Matt and Kevin Pritchard, Scott
Fenton and Phil McGain. So the five of us had
taken over the management of Gaastra Sails with
Win Loc who were the manufacturers. When we
left we had nothing but some ideas and we had
to be different to what had gone before.
But there again you and the Team walked in
and the guys who were working there before
you were given their marching orders.
You could say there was a pattern. But we had
the team thing going way back while we were
still with Neil Pryde. The idea was that we would
use the Team to generate sponsorship.
BARRY SPANIER INTERVIEW
MAUI SAILS REVIVED
You know I’m sixty this year so I’m one of the older
guys in the windsurfing business. I sold my house
on Maui and made a lot of money on that and
bought a place in Oregon where my family lives. I
reckon I could have retired but team work is an
interesting thing. You get involved with people, you
work with them and they give you part of their lives
and you give them part of yours.
So when we left Gaastra we’d already being doing
just about everything in sail development and
marketing and it didn’t take us long to say ‘let’s do
Maui Sails’. Maui Sails had been around as a brand
since 1978. It hadn’t actually done much in
manufacture but there was a sign on the door over
Neil Pryde R&D. I didn’t work for Neil Pryde, I owned
Maui Sails who had a contract with Neil Pryde to do
their sail research and development. In the end
when Neil bought Spanier and Bourne sail makers
he made a really nice shop and after a few years he
took the original sail makers sign down and
replaced it with one which said ‘Neil Pryde Maui’
and that’s what it is now. Meanwhile Maui Sails just
sat there, a registered trade mark in Japan, Great
Britain, United States and I think Australia as well as
a few other places too. So it was a living brand it just
hadn’t been doing a lot apart from a few T-shirts.
If we hadn’t started the Maui Sails thing I might not
have stayed in the business. I’m working on two of
three interesting things and at one point even
considered going into ocean cruising as I did
before. In fact I have a part interest in a 42-foot
catamaran that I sail.
Over the years I have noticed that your interest
appears to be primarily focused on racing.
As the market is so freeride biased, is that a wise
thing to do?
Racing is the thing that is the most technically
challenging. It requires the highest development
levels. But I don’t care what sort of sail it is. Twist,
shape, distribution and rig tension – these are all
factors which determine a sail’s performance no
matter what kind of sail it is and you need to know
how to generate a good working shape.
Just because you’re designing a freeride sail rather
than a race sail it doesn’t mean that everything that
you’ve done before gets tossed out. You’re still
looking for the same proportionality, tension and
balance. Everybody says that developing race sails at
this time is out of focus but we have a development
routine. We work on wave sails from the middle
December until the beginning of April. From April to
July we work on freeride sails. Then starting June we
pick up on the race sails until it is time to produce.
There won’t be any radical changes and what you’re
really doing is changing something because of
something you learnt or something you’re trying to
achieve. So there’s not enough time to mess around.
Now it’s even more important to run to schedule as
we have to register race sails in January.
I’d say in the old days we’d work on race sails more.
More time on development and testing gave us a big
advantage on the race course. If you turned up for a
race with newly developed sails that gave you a real
advantage over the other guy.
OBSERVER
How do you evaluate design changes?
Mainly I watch. But changes these days are more
gradual – it’s more like refining designs. I think the
whole thing is still moving forward but as we learn
more about sail design, it’s become more gradual.
Fifteen years ago the situation was different. The
release of cheap carbon fibre from the space
industry made it possible to make lighter and stiffer
masts and booms. Along with that came high
downhaul tension and a lot of work on how the sail
breathes. So those were major changes but these
days I cannot see how any major quantum leaps will
take place. Back in the 90s we did a lot of work with
an aerospace company in California in
computational fluid dynamics and we developed a
really interesting way of turning photographs into the
three dimensional grids that you use to do analysis.
If it wasn’t so expensive to do that, we would use
those systems more today and then I am pretty
certain we’d see some big jumps. But the sport isn’t
big enough to support that kind of research. Even
the Americas Cup contestants cannot afford to do it.
But the thing that we did wasn’t all that complicated
but after all the number crunching and analysis, we
seemed to almost gain more by going out and
testing the sail on the water.
The sort of setup we’re looking at involves high
powered electronics on board the windsurfer as well
as on the shore, top level cameras and at least three
people operating that stuff. It’s about a fifty grand
outlay even before you’ve started. Then after a week
the data comes out of the computer and it shows
you the sail operating at a given moment. But in a
week you can learn a lot more by sailing the
prototypes, re-cutting, then evaluating by sailing it
again and so on. It’s more an incremental process
than anything else.
We’ve done computer analysis and we’ve learnt from
it but it’s not something I would do on a day to day
basis because it takes too much time, energy and
money compared to what you get from just going
sailing and just going sailing is a lot more fun.
I don’t know about other guys but I like to watch the
sail operating. I’ve been watching sails operate for
such a long time that maybe I see something that
other people don’t. I always listen to the sailor but
watching is the way that I refine the physical shape
of the sail so that there are no weird bumps in the
loaded form. You can take photographs of course
but here again you stop the motion of the sail in
time. Or you can use high quality video footage but
here again it all boils down to watching.
THE RETURN OF THE CAM
After a few years when the camber inducer was
totally out of fashion, we’ve come to a point
where recreational sails are being designed with
two or more cambers. How would you sum up
the differences between the no cam or RAF sail
and one with cambers?
They have different functions. If I were designing a
freeride sail that was being sailed in average
conditions, that sailor would love to have a
cambered sail because in the right conditions a
cambered sail is more stable, easier to handle. I also
understand why people love to have RAF sails -
when they gybe they neutralise, you can hold them
and they feather really nicely so they’re lighter to
use. But in the end when you sheet in the difference
between the two is going to be small. A RAF sail will
have 95% of the speed of a camber and in the end
that will be ironed out by sailor skills.
ACCURACY
You moved your manufacture from China, where
you were since early Neil Pryde days, to Sri
Lanka. Any reason for that?
One of the main differences with Maui Sails is the
way that they are made. Our facility has the best
accuracy and reproduction that I have seen
anywhere in the business. I haven’t been into some
lofts but I talk to people and know pretty much what
is going on. By cutting everything on a machine and
assembling everything on plotted templates you get
close on 100% accuracy of what your ideas are. We
hired someone with top CAD experience and now
every single piece of the sail comes straight out of
the machine and straight onto assembly. So there’s
no hand cutting, hand drawing or anything that can
cause inaccuracy. We know, in the past, there’s
been a lot of variation in the race sails because
people come up to us and said that their sail didn’t
look quite like their buddy’s or wasn’t as fast. We
know what is going on, we’re on the inside and
maybe one of the guys slipped with his razor or
maybe he cut a little chunk off because it didn’t
match. That’s production. But they don’t do that at
our production loft – that place is the tightest ship I
have ever know. And we like it in Sri Lanka, it’s
cleaner, beaches are nice, it’s a relaxed society, the
air is clean and the relationship with the staff is very
relaxed as well. So it’s a great place to manufacture.
CRYSTAL BALL TIME
If you were asked where you’d like Maui Sails to
be in say five years time, what would you say?
If you listen to us sitting around talking, we want to
be one of the top brands. There’s no reason why
that shouldn’t happen. When we moved into Gaastra
we weren’t that organised. They had just been into
their total flow thing, business wasn’t great. We
turned that around to the point that we sold twenty
four thousand sails and put Gaastra right into the
number two position of top selling sail brands. Now I
don’t see any reason why we can’t do exactly the
same with Maui Sails.
