Visit to North Sails

Super Yachts are called Super yachts when they are way over 100 feet, or that's what we were told on Thursday in the Loft at North Sails. It's called a loft but not what you and I would call a loft. Its the biggest "loft" in the Europe, run by a UK company.

This is half way down the loft

We were shown how North Sails make the the sails for a Super yacht main and jib. The main is so enormous, requires a crane to lift it off the "table" and into the boxes for transport and another crane to get it onto the mast in the yacht. 

Super yachts use 2 or 3 and sometimes 4 of these enormous black sails (the 'in' colour so it doesn't clash with the boat and furniture colours). Each main is about 80K and each jib about 40K - how cool is that - having about 3 sail changes a year!

The sewing machines even travelled backwards with the sails on rollers moving forwards, as they can't be moved due to their weight.

The best bit was all the beautiful spinnaker colours, we could have a different range of colours on each X boat. Go psychedelic. 

It was a very interesting visit with a talk and a delicious plate of nibbles