Cutting edge sail technology
There are only few sailmakers in the world who are capable of making sails for the Olympics – we are proud of being one of them. And how’s that possible for a smallish, Northern sail loft? Because we have invested heavily on R&D, technology and simulation.
To make your sail choice easier, we have identified the needs of the different sailors and created product lines that incorporate the essential technologies for each application.
Are you a racer? See our racing sails.
Is cruising your thing? Take a look at our cruising sails.
View more about technology and R&D on our video page, or our YouTube channel
Different technologies for different purposes
To make your choice easier, we have divided our sail technology in to different lines. We have currently three lines for cruising and two lines for racing, plus our One Design sails.
The options for cruising consist of traditional woven Dacrons, polyester laminates or in case of bigger boats, Dyneema laminates.
The options for racing is always a laminate for bigger boats, while small OD-boats mostly use hard finished (Polykote or HTP-) Dacron. For more, see the links on the left.
WB-Sails firsts
| 1979 | One of the first sail lofts to use computers for design |
| 1980 | First Mylar sails in Finland |
| 1983 | First Kevlar sails in Finland |
| 1985 | A fullfledged 3D design software in Apple Mac |
| 1986 | First string reinforced load-path sails in Half-tonners |
| 1988 | First Laser cutter specifically for sailmaking in Europe |
| 1989 | In-house VLM flow analysis software MacSail |
| 1990 | In-house VPP for performance evaluation, 5 years before IMS |
| 1993 | ShapePlot software for analysing MastCam video of sails, 3 years before anyone else |
| 1994 | First all Ultrabond-glued sails |
| 1995 | First windtunnel tests at Helsinki University of Technology to validate our flow codes |
| 1995 | First Carbon fibre Finn mast design in the world |
| 1998 | First CubenFiber sails in Europe |
| 1999 | CFD upgrade to panel codes |
| 2003 | The multi-axial Maxx-fabric with Contender |
| 2005 | CFD upgrade to Navier Stokes |
| 2006 | Ultrasonic bonding machine, no sewing |
| 2007 | DynaSim, dynamic simulation of sails |
| 2011 | CFD upgrade to LES, large eddy simulation |