kit is absolutely reliable,’ he says. ‘What is just amazing about the North Sails Performance kit is how light it stays even in very wet conditions. The 4DL patches just don’t take in any, any water at all. It’s great and so comfortable.’ And Escoffier is not alone in singing the praises of the new kit. Being lightweight yet extremely robust, 4DL is proving to be popular with offshore sailors and by the end of the 2021 Transat Jacques Vabre in which teams went from cold, dark and wet to the heat of the tropics in one race, Maxi Edmund de Rothschild’s (Gitana 17) skipper Charles Caudrelier didn’t hold back in his praise: ‘For the Transat Jacques Vabre whenever we did manoeuvres the North Sails gear is just magic,’ he said shortly after taking the Ultime class win in the race. The North Sails Performance team is understandably delighted: ‘It’s clear that whether they’re racing or training, extreme offshore teams like Escoffier aboard his Imoca or the Gitana Team spend their life on the edge in some pretty serious conditions yet in the last 12 months there were no reported issues, not a single one,’ Nigel Musto says. It’s hardly surprising therefore that North Sails Performance are so bullish and confident about their new product. 4DL has proved already to be robust, effective and by the accounts of those who have been riding the weather rail for hours on end, dry. ‘The funny thing is that because the sport has never had this type of product we’ve ended up accepting what has become the norm. The fact is that people don’t really appreciate
Top left: the Gitana Team chose to wear North Sails Performance during their dominant 2021 race season
onboard their foiling Ultime MaxiEdmund de Rothschild. Top right: North Sails Performance isn’t just about off- shore racing. They have a full range of inshore kit and deckwear for male and female sailors. Above: 4DL reinforcement patches are laminated in place with North Sails’ proprietary technology, eliminating bulky, leaking seams
created by traditional reinforcement methods
what dry is until they’ve experienced being properly dry. They’re so used to being damp that dry is a bit of a new feeling. And this is what we’re bringing to the party. You really won’t get a damp backside,’ Nigel explains. As the testing went on there were other advantages that started to appear. ‘While we hadn’t set out with an intent to make a garment that was significantly lighter than anything else on the market, that’s what we ended up with. This lamination fabric is so much lighter than Cordura we’ve saved 30 per cent in weight on dry trousers when compared with our opposition’s equivalent. And that’s when they’re dry. Because everyone else uses Cordura patches, which hold a lot of water, my guess is that we’ll be at least 50 per cent lighter in very wet conditions.’
Tapping into the French offshore scene proved to be invaluable for the North Sails Performance team. While many of the world’s major events were postponed or cancelled, parts of the shorthanded offshore scene were able to continue, most notably the Imoca 60 class and the Vendée Globe. ‘There are very few sailors that have clocked up the kind of miles that the French sailors have over the last two years and that’s been great because one of the main things we need in testing is hours on the water because that’s usually what causes failures,’ Nigel Musto says. In some ways the North Sails Performance team wasn’t surprised. Secret testing in Australia during training for the 2019 Sydney Hobart Race as well as in the race itself had suggested that 4DL was already delivering more than they had expected. The following year had seen many offshore miles completed in the Imoca scene, culminating in the Vendée Globe.
Once their secret was out of the bag, teams took 4DL into the 2021 season and delivered North Sails
Performance with plenty of validations and feedback as the wide range of conditions provided the perfect environment to put theory into practice once again. From the punchy, wild upwind start of the 2021 Rolex Fastnet Race to the intensity of the Copa del Rey and Les Voiles de St Tropez it was difficult to imagine a wider range of conditions. North Sails president Ken Read is in no doubt as to just how big a step the new clothing represents and doesn’t hold back.
‘Whenever North Sails sets out to build something, it’s a given that we plan on it being best in show. And the North Sails gear that Nigel Musto and his team have designed and built, for all marine applications, is quite simply better,’ he says. ‘He utilised a number of us who have a bit of time on the water to present what we thought were important features. Combine all of that with the new 4DL technology and voilà... the best foul weather gear, made of the best fabric, that the world has ever seen.’ But while the 4DL project gets a big tick, the North Sails Performance team is working on another area that has been neglected and overlooked for many years, women’s offshore kit. Which takes us full circle because, if you think this is marketing speak, when Nigel explains what the North Sails team has been working on you start to wonder why it is only now that solutions are appearing and those answers are on their way. In the meantime, he remains in no doubt about the significance of the move to 4DL reinforcement. ‘When breathable foul weather gear came onto the scene, many people thought that it was a luxury item, great if you could bear the additional cost. Within a few years, no one was considering anything else. We believe 4DL has the potential to do the same.’
www.northsails.com/Performance q
SEAHORSE 69
RORC/PAUL WYETH
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