We Love May

The shrink wrap’s coming off. The guys in the boatyard that houses Atlantis World HQ are running flat out to catch up and get boats in. The Red Sox are hot and the Yankees are stumbling. Just another Spring in beautiful Marblehead.

And it is beautiful. The past week has been one spectacular day after another, and the marine industry is loving life. Here at Atlantis, we’ve had some pretty good days too. Last Thursday evening, we had an in-store launch of the AWG 2007 product line at Team One Newport, arguably THE authority on and source for technical sailing gear. The event was well-attended, both by customers and by the Newport maritime cognoscenti who never pay for their own gear. Mick Harvey and the IYAC folks provided some drink tickets, and the launch party moved across the street to continue the sailing stories that were already in progress.

Team One owner Martha Parker is a bundle of wired energy who accomplishes more in a day than three normal humans. She’s also a gear expert, and her vote of confidence was very important to us. Full disclosure: Martha and I have known each other for 20+ years and we’ve sailed a lot of miles together. That said, though, the bet she’s making on us goes far beyond the call of duty, and we truly appreciate that.

Our main idea behind our product strategy has been clear from the day we first purchased the AWG brand: great gear doesn’t have to look like crap. We’ve set out to design sailing gear that works better than anything else on the water, but also looks good enough to keep wearing once you’re ashore (if you don’t want to look like the Gloucester Fisherman). The idea that a performance sailing gear brand can make the leap from the micro-market of performance sailors to appeal to a broader audience is not new, but to-date, no one’s been able to do it right.

Enter Puma.

I’ve spent the past few months working with Ken Read to put together the Puma Racing entry in the 2008-2009 Volvo Ocean Race. On Friday, we held a press conference at the Boston Harbor Hotel to introduce the boat (something to see – see Sailing Anarchy for some great pics), and announce Boston as the sole US stopover for the race. We also spend a couple of hours ripping around the harbor in one of the coolest boats I’ve been on.

The VO70 is pure function – a tool built for getting around the planet as fast as possible – and it is something to behold up close. According to Jerry Kirby, veteran of a couple of these races, it is a level well beyond the kind of offshore racing most of us are used to. Every time the boat tacks, the crew spends 15 minutes shifting everything that’s not screwed down to the high side, and between that and a steady stream of sail changes, it’s possible to miss a couple of off-watches and end up staying awake for 20+ hours. The guys that do this are not sailors, they are highly-conditioned and trained professional athletes, and they earn everything they make.

What I find gratifying about Puma’s entry into the VOR is that someone besides us believes there’s a lifestyle opportunity here. Puma’s corporate strategy is to build the brand at the intersection of sport and lifestyle (they call it “sportlifestyle”), and they see enough of an opportunity in sailing, a sport with which they’ve never been involved in the past, to make it their main global marketing initiative for the next 2+ years. The Puma brand speaks to a younger audience than we do, but the fact that someone else believes that sailing gear can be cool is music to our ears here at AWG.

Finally, congratulations to fellow Marblehead sailor Jud Smith for winning his 6^th Etchells North American Championship (and 4^th in a row). Given the depth of talent in that class, this kind of domination is unprecedented, and to us, it couldn’t be wrought upon the class by a nicer, more genuinely down-to-earth guy. Way to go, Jud!

Happy Spring?

As I look out the window of our offices at the Marblehead Trading Company boatyard, it looks like a classic spring day in Marblehead: blowing 40+ with waves breaking over the causeway and a hint of sleet in the air. Granted, it’s not always like this, but spring here is typically non-existent – we go straight from winter to summer – which seems to be part of what makes Marblehead sailors a different breed. Not only do you need to deal with a broad range of conditions on the water, but if you want to get your boat in before July, you better buck up and figure out how to start working on your pre-launch checklist in the snow (it was sleeting three days ago). It’s still ski season, but down on Long Island Sound, they’re gearing up for the first regatta of the season, and the water is probably already at a temperature where it won’t rise to until June here (if we’re lucky). It can be 80 degrees here, but as soon as you get a hint of a seabreeze, you can watch the temperature plummet before your eyes. It’s the only place I’ve ever lived where there’s a wind-chill factor in May.

This is the crucible from which our new line of performance sailing gear is formed, and it’s where we make sure it works. We designed and built the gear we think New England sailors need: rugged and versatile gear built out of high-tech fabrics that keep you comfortable and let you function at a high-level no matter what Mother Nature’s cooking up for you. At the moment, it’s not a broad line, but we don’t think you’ll find many gaps in it. If you do, tell us where you think they are, and we’ll take that into consideration in our product development process. We want to design our gear in partnership with our customers. Isn’t that the best way to make sure we’re selling a product that people want? We expect this blog to be one of the ways we keep in touch with our customers (you, we hope), and give you a way to keep in touch with us. We’ll use it to tell you what we’re up to, what we care about and what we’re thinking about. What we think is cool and what we think is stupid. Who’s done something really good and who’s done something not so good (see below). But we don’t want it to be a one-way conversation, so we invite you to use it the same way. Give it to us straight up – we can take it.

So here goes:

This picture popped up on Sailing Anarchy the other day. It’s a shot of one of the umpire boats at the Jackson Cup at Boston Yacht Club after it ejected its driver and went on an unauthorized, unguided high-speed ramble, ending up on the beach after a brief visit to the Eastern Yacht Club pier.The reason this is particularly relevant to us is that the boat belongs to Bill Mann, our Creative Director, who loaned it to the event. Needless to say, both the boat and its owner were somewhat deflated, and the umpire driving the boat, fairly sheepish. He’s a good guy, and shit happens, but there’s definitely a lesson to be learned here. Imagine if this had been one of the Pleon sailing coaches instead and had happened in July when the harbor is wall-to-wall boats with a gaggle of Optis nearby? The best possible outcome is significant boat damage. The worst possible outcome is unthinkable. Do I clip the kill switch lanyard onto myself every time I step on a power boat by myself? No. Should I? Probably. Should we do what we can to ensure that coaches and sailing instructors do? Absolutely. As our umpire friend demonstrated, it’s pretty easy to fall out of these things, and as the number of coach boats on the racetrack continues to grow, the more important it becomes to have their drivers attached to them.