KAI HOPF
(Sail design, 24 years experience.)
Kai has been at the forefront of the North sail design team for over two decades, once again another voice of long term experience and incredible knowledge in his field. Working alongside the likes of Victor Fernandez, Marco Lang, Gollito Estredo and always in close contact with Raoul, Kai is in charge of the complete NorthSails range that goes out into production and consequently always has a tonne of work on his plate. “My job entails everything from mopping the floors (laughs), designing the sails, re-cutting the sails, taking them to the beach, making sure they test the sails and all the checks that need to be done before they go into production. I have been doing this for North for twenty years! I actually made my first sail thirty-three years ago. The more you learn each year, the more you learn what you don’t know! We improve our products with a lot of hard work behind the scenes. Our race sails improved dramatically the past few seasons. A sail can eventually reach a point where it is not improving so you have to reconceptualise. You pretty much throw everything away and start afresh. It is a tonne of work starting from scratch because you are not evolving from the previous sail. You have to mutate into a completely new product. We zeroed everything out, reset all and punched in fresh numbers and eventually came out with the new sails, which were incredible last season. More than anything the biggest challenge is figuring out what your goal is. The end result isn’t what people think it is half the time.
Our sails come as a complete package, which I think is hugely important. There are so many nuances that come into play with a rig that you kind of need to use all the recommended accessories to obtain the best performance from your product. Different masts have different impacts and everything is tuned to work a certain way to get the best performance. Raoul prides himself in producing the very best accessories and rightfully so. He has put a huge amount of work into the products. Uli is also an amazing engineer and technical guy. Every moment of his spare time he is going on a trip somewhere so he can try stuff out; he is passionate about what he does! I think that is reflected in the hardware. North is all about product, quality product!
The one thing that we have over our competitors is years of experience. We don’t have people coming and going. Raoul and myself have both been working for North for over twenty years now. Even the staff in the back office have all been there a long time. So when you call up NorthSails and you need a warranty or something, the person you talk to knows the job and the product inside out. Our whole team has been there a long time. We are loyal to riders and vice versa with the staff behind the scenes. If I start working with a rider for testing it can take two or three years before you really get them tuned in to your thought process. Marco Lang is now in his third year and has become extremely valuable. He knows how to communicate with me now and we have a great working relationship. It takes time to familiarize the way they analyse sails and their emotional attachment to the results. Some riders can be amazing sailors but horrible testers, so it all takes time to know the strengths and weaknesses of each character.
I like hearing about when a guy jumps on a sail and loves it. It does not matter if it is a team rider winning an event or a sailor in Utah who is stoked with his sail. That is the fun part. Every year there is a small window where you can be creative. It is not a big amount of time after you have finished all the year’s designs, but you do get to play when you start all over again. It is nice not to have the pressure on and be creative. I am never happy with the range of sails we make! That is the driving force behind why I do this job. Since I started designing sails, I was never happy with my gear. To this day, if I use a product or look at a product, my one goal is to try and make it better. The goal line always moves away from you! There is no room for being complacent because nobody else is standing still either. The bar keeps rising higher and the expectations keep getting bigger. Just because a sail is the best this year does not mean that it will be the best the following year. The high stress point for me of the year is getting all the sails out on time. There may not be wind during the last week of our test program or sails might get stuck in customs. That time period can be stressful. The workload can keep building for all the things you need to get done but the time you have to do it can become less and less. That is deadlines I suppose. You might sit down and realize you have 1000 hours of work to do and only 500 hours left! That situation I try and avoid at all costs!”
