Interview Barry Spanier (Maui Sails)

[Rudie]

Mooi interview voornamelijk over de visie van het bedrijf en hun producten. Misschien makkelijk gezegd als klein bedrijf dat je je niet echt richt op het PWA circuit en dat grote bedrijven de PRO's bij ze wegplukken, maar daar zit toch zeker een kern van waarheid in!

ENGLISH VERSION
Barry Spanier needs no presentations: he is a living legend of windsurfing. Born in California, with German blood and probably salt water running in his veins, he falls in love with sailing when still a kid and wind and the Ocean will influence all of his life. After adventurous fates put a stop to his Ocean roaming life, he found himself in Maui with a sewing machine and started a sail and awnings repair business to make for a living. Once again destiny turned the tables: an hurricane devastated the island's yachting fleet, and Barry woke up one morning with no more customers. But then the pioneers of a new sport knocked at the Maui Sails doors: they needed repairs for their sails, shredded on Ho'okipa reefs. Barry understood that those sails had some severe shortcomings, so he proposed to build new ones... since then, Barry's prolific mind produced or developed so many innovations, that it would be tough to have any fun windsurfing without them: vertical and radial cut sails, low pressure camber inducers (no other type is in use now), seat harness, the RAF concept, carbon masts, fat head sails (from which are descended practically all modern sails) and I do forget something by sure.
Barry's sails are true milestones in our sport: from the first Tri-Panel used by "King of Ho'okipa" Mike Waltze, through the Tri-Radial, the speed Wing that enabled Fred Haywood to run 500 meters at over 30 knots, Mark Angulo's RAF Wave, the RAF Speed, and then the sails of Bjoern Dunkerbeck: the revolutionary World Cup Slalom and following MkII, MkIII and MkIV, the Combat Wave, the various VX; and more, the Nitro of the Pritchard brothers, all the way to the Maui Sails TR used by Kevin Pritchard to effectively fight Albeau's dominance in the PWA circuit.
Barry's ideas about what works and what is just marketing are very clear, and he speaks his mind freely in this interview.

GEO: Hi Barry, welcome on ABC Windsurf. Can you please make a brief resume of your experience in the windsurfing industry for our readers (well, very brief in your case...), and tell them what is your occupation at present?
BARRY: In 1978 I founded Spanier & Bourne Sailmakers in Maui (AKA MauiSails) with partner, Geoffrey Bourne. We were made the exclusive design group for Neil Pryde Sails in 1982 and eventually sold the business to Neil in 1996, continuing to work for him as employees until 1998. During that time I designed a large part of the Neil Pryde sail collection, including all racing sails used by Bjoern Dunkerbeck to win eleven World Championships.
In 1999, working with Phil McGain, Scott Fenton, Matt Pritchard, Kevin Pritchard as The Team, we assumed the management of Gaastra brand windsurfing products doing all product design, marketing, promotion, sales, and team. We won the World Champioship in 2000 with Kevin Pritchard preventing Dunkerbeck from getting #13 in a row.
In 2005, after dismissal from Gaastra, MauiSails was resurrected from being a sleeping brand and revitalized. Now work continues and our experience is producing rewards.

GEO: I know that at present there are quite a few things that keep you busy, along with the windsurfing sail business. Can you tell us something about your non-windurfing life?
BARRY: I also have found a lot of satisfaction in writing stories and working on screenplays for film. This is not producing any concrete results but has led to interesting projects like Commercial Sail Associates (www.commercial-sail-associates.com) and a web based series of relaxation experiences aimed at helping people with stress related problems (www.lifehut.com).
The lifehut thing has been especially enjoyable and seems to be gaining some visibility.
Probably the most enjoyable thing we have done recently has been the writing and publishing of a book about my life as a young ocean vagabond. It is based on a collection of letters i wrote to my mother over a period of four years, and takes the reader along on the fantastic voyage of a lifetime. Dear Mom - The Bare Chronicles is the story I always have wanted to tell and it is now available.
Recently I have been able to get back into boat sailing as a result of acquiring a 42 foot 1974 cruising yacht that needed lots of work. Over the last eight months my wife and I have completely rebuilt the interior and done a lot of other necessary ugrades with the idea of being able to integrate the boat into our work with the windsurf brand by using her for photo projects and local island exploration.

GEO: After so many years of designing top class windsurfing sails, what in your designs has remained the same over this long time, and what has changed the most, since when you started winning World Cup titles?
BARRY: Actually, most of the structural attributes developed in the early eighties are still core to our current sail architecture; full length luff panels, horizontal shaping, RAF style in the waves, and a general goal of low rig tension while still developing good skin tension with soft feel. Shaping methods and values are quite similar still, only more refined thanks to modern design tools in the computer and the ever growing reference data.

GEO: What of the above is due to actual evolution, and what is due to different racing conditions/courses?
BARRY: It's all just evolution. The racing has changed but the sails simply adapt as it does. But the shaping tools and architecture stay the same. Sails grew in size because of board/fin/course changes, but the way of creating them is not that different at all.

GEO: Your sails have always been outstanding designs, and the present MauiSails collection is no exception; nevertheless, your sails look rather peculiar by many points of view. Can you describe in what your designs differ the most when compared to the competition, and what are the consequent advantages?
BARRY: If looking 'peculiar' means simple and clean with no gimmick stupid marketing things, then I suppose this is correct. Marketing is the death of all things that are real. When i see all the bullshit cutaways, weird leech outlines, and other strange stuff that will be gone next season and never really explained, I just laugh. For us, the simple, unbroken lines and smooth even tension are the secret to good fun and efficient sailing. When it looks like every company is just doing things because the other does, then you can be sure no one really knows what is right.

GEO: Yes actually your sails stand out by not displaying "special features", things that could be done with ease, but whose advantages would be questionable, if any. Nevertheless, your designs often seem to be going in different directions than those of most others. Right now, as an instance, your biggest competitors show a trend towards "compact" sail outlines with very low aspect ratio; during the same time, your race sails have been keeping roughly the same outline since years, with a tendency towards slightly higher A/R. Since swimming against the tide is usually tougher, there must be some reason for this. Can you explain your point of view on this?
BARRY: I think our designs have always had longer booms and more compact outlines, especially in the wave sails. As with the race sails, it took a long time to evolve these forms and we know they function very well. Unless you know definitively from testing that a new thing will out perform the old, changing it for production is just an experiment paid for by customers. It takes years to become confident in the form because there are simply too many sizes, types, and circumstances to adequately test in a normal short development cycle. The trend to make everything new every year is not reasonable at all.

GEO: Your racing sails, the TR-6 line and its predecessors, rig with a relatively reduced downhaul tension. This is counterintuitive, as race sails are usually acknowledged as needing a very high downhaul tension in order to achieve stability. Can you describe how is it possible to gain adequate stability and performances with such low downhaul tension?
BARRY: Downhaul tension doesn't need to be high to have good tension in the sail body. For every stiffness and length of mast there is an ideal tension that will bend the mast enough to keep the sail stable and the shaping if done correctly will set up the correct twist for the desired wind range. This is why we have been using a custom load cell device to calibrate the designs and keep the tension correct from size to size, no guesswork. If you have a hot performing design, say a 7.0, and you want the 6.6 and 7.6 to be similar in feel and performance, then ideally you want the downhaul tension to be in a range that makes sense. For instance, if the 6.6 would require a lot more tension than the 7.0 or something like that, then there is obviously something worth considering to get the numbers into a proper ascending or descending range.

GEO: Let's talk materials. You seem pretty conservative from this point of view: your (race) sails are completely monofilm based, while we see the competition often adopting different solutions. We see lots of black, coloured or metallescent film, white laminates, and varied types of X-ply. Is there a reason for you sticking either with plain monofilm, or Technora as a very expensive option?
BARRY: All laminates (includes all XPly, colored, or metallized films) have two or three layers and are heavier and softer than single layer clear film. So if you use color, metal, or normal XPly, you give up some weight and stretch resistance. So we either use film for its good characteristics, or Technora because it is half the weight of comparable film with less stretch and better durability (but at a much higher cost).

GEO: Josh Angulo achieved the waveWorld Champion title in 2009 with the MauiSails Legend. How did your wave sail designs evolve since when you started operations as MauiSails?
BARRY: The biggest 'evolution' was during the development of the TR-3 when we removed the twist component from the downhaul tension component. As we wroked this idea through all the ranges and sizes it consistently improved all the sails in handling and balance and generally produced more low-end as well. Before that, there was always a yearly 'improvement', but nothing like the big chnage around that time. Now that we have had threee years of conttinuing work on this shaping concept I can only say that the results are getting totally consistent through the ranges and the general customer satisfaction is growing stronger as a result.

GEO: Another uncommon thing about Maui Sails is about the small PWA team. I guess that Josh Angulo left in a difficult time to find a replacement. Do you have any plans about your team?
BARRY: We believe our products should speak for themselves. The 'pro' competition scene is just a large demo circus that can easily be controlled with bigger money. We get young promising people on board, they do well with the gear, then the money comes and takes them away. When I worked with the big company it was easy to have a big team, they just bought them. For us, we would rather have users choose the gear for its performance and then raise their profile as a result. And we are definitely not a big company able to support that aspect. I am far more interested to see local level racing with real people being won by our brand than to have the winner of the PWA. On the local level, that is meaningless.