BEN KELLY BRINGS MULTIHULL SUCCESS TO NORTH SAILS BRISBANE

Bringing Together Sail Design, Multihull Racing And Building New Projects

North Sails Expert Ben Kelly was destined to be a sail maker, first working in a loft at age 14, giving back to his junior Sabot sponsor by helping out in the loft during school holidays. More than 25 years later, his knowledge and experience have developed from designing small fleets of skiff and multihull sails to now being North Sails Brisbane's Asia-Pacific Multihull Expert with substantial global projects. Not only has he been designing and building sail inventories for a vast range of boats in his career, Ben has also recently managed the design and build of his own trimaran 'El Toro', along with three other highly skilled friends as the ownership group.

An all-round experience

Sailing an array of dinghys and other race boats throughout his youth, Ben's interest in sailmaking grew when he and Scott Venes made their own sails for the 505 World Championships at 17. "I got the itch to really want to design them and learn more about getting into that side," Ben explains. "I was meant to go to university and be an architect, but instead, I went back to the sail loft and basically got stuck into it!" "I learnt how to design sails while getting good results and started to shift out of skiffs and sports boats and into multihulls. So I worked my way up the ranks there and managed to get some great runs on the board in the Australian fleet with some good results, and built my name in multihull sailmaking in Australia from about the year 2000 after formally finishing my apprenticeship." "I sailed on some fantastic multihulls with some great guys along the way, where I learnt plenty and really started to build sails across the fleet and spreading across the country like in Melbourne, South Australia, and Pittwater in Sydney. And even though I liked sailing all sorts of boats, multihulls became and real enjoyment for me. And when the results came, it sort of expanded from there."

Making moves North

Loving the experience of racing and designing sails for multihull yachts, Ben built his career by running his sailmaking business while also working for other companies in the industry before making one of the more significant changes in his life so far. "I made the choice to step away and move over to North Sails in 2018. It was a good transition for me, I knew who the team were and brand was, and very aware of the strength of different aspects of it. I hadn't made that many big changes over my life, so it was pretty exciting to take on." "Though I'm not designing much anymore, we've got designers at the highest level at North Sails we can tap into whenever we need. And that brings confidence, sailability, and repeatability - basically, we're talking about the biggest pie of designs and experience that's available in our industry, so I really enjoy all of that!" Ben comments. "I love reaching out to the designers we work with, they're collaborative, and they'll go right through everything. I've probably spent a lot of my career having to work it out on my own, and still going okay, but it is nice to know that you can get information from anywhere within North Sail's expertise." "I've spent four years at Norths now and working closely particularly Magnus Doole in New Zealand and Dick Parker in Sydney; they've just got a lot of experience and really good tools to design the best sails. So, they'll come to us with solutions that I would not be able to achieve elsewhere, particularly from an engineering standpoint, and the science of it is just at a whole other level. That's probably the biggest gain in coming to North Sails. And for me personally, I've got involved in bigger projects than what I have before while still being able to work with my customer base with a more premium product," Ben explains. "One of the coolest things was being involved in the newly designed 3Di 49er sails. It was a really cool process to be involved in, and learnt a lot, and was a really good way to see what the company and product can do. To be involved in and get an inside view of how production works and the global team that goes into it, from the designers to the people who help manage production, and then working with the team on the floor in Sydney to do the modifications." "I care about our customers getting value, that the sails are well designed, and just that we're doing a good job. I think having had my own business, similar to some of the guys I work with, we've had it all on our shoulders before, and it's kind of your brand as well, so I think I care most about the outcome for our customers."

Modeling 'El Toro'

Having sailed on customers' boats for more than 20 years, with 11 Australian title wins on five different boats under the OMR rating rule, Ben believes that as sailmakers, it's part of the job to optimise the package for someone's boat and help them win the races they have in their sights. However, Ben has gone the extra mile and designed his own 9m Trimaran to both race himself as well as use as a 'working model' for sail testing and design. "So, from a fairly amateur boat building approach, because we're not boat designers, we went one step further and built a boat that we could go and try to have success in the fleet," he explains. "Building a tri has been a bucket list project for a while with a mate of mine who's an engineer and boat builder. We designed it together about seven years ago, and then one other friend just pushed us to start building the boat before we even considered how big of a deal that is! It's a big, fun, and challenging project with lots of ups and downs, but very rewarding. And it is a real example to be able to use to experiment with sails and try to improve what we can do for the sailors and customers in that group, so it's a real working model, I guess." "It's got a full North Sails inventory and a mixture of 3Di and tri-radial sails. It's not an Extreme 40, and it's not a foiling boat; it's just a good all-rounder that's designed to be sailed with a reasonably amateur crew, and we love it. We've got two boat builders, and painter, and myself as the ownership group, and we basically built the whole boat apart from the rig. It couldn't have been done without such a good group of people who are really good with their own strengths and skills." "It has a full Norths Sails inventory. The mainsail is all-black triradial NPL aramid laminate, the jib is a self-tacking 3Di Raw 360 jib, the upwind screacher is a Code 55 design 3Di 700 downwind sail, and the masthead furling A3 is an NPL Code laminate. So it's a bit of a mixture of our premium products and triradial club racing laminates. All the sails are built well, and I've been really happy with the design for the boat - now it's just getting around to building bigger sails!"

In the pipeline

Working with the North Sails Brisbane team, Ben's exciting new projects are providing him with the opportunity to bring the teams' wide-ranging background and experience together to individualise their customers' sail package and performance. "A really cool thing I got to do with North Sails was go to Minden in the USA to the 3Di factory, which was a real highlight for me to see and understand how incredible the operation is and seeing how efficiently it runs - it was an eye opener. The understanding I got from being there really gave me the confidence and comfortability about the product, it really gave me the knowledge I needed." "I've always loved sailing on the Extreme 40s, and we've developed the sail wardrobe with our designers, who have come up with some great improvements for the class on a sail design front. The Helix downwind sails, which we've started to integrate into a lot of our clients' boats, and that's been a great step forward." "And finally, the other bigger projects we've got at the moment is a 72ft carbon cruiser racer cat, that's in build in Australia at the moment, and that's going to be launched in July this year, and I'm going to be onboard that for Hamilton Island Race Week, as well as probably some offshore and ocean races to be done with that boat next year. I enjoy still doing a bit of IRC racing on the 40ft yachts, as well as sailing F18s a bit over the past few years, but it's hard to have enough time to do it all!" Ben finishes. Get in touch with Ben Kelly and the North Sails Brisbane Experts to find out how they can optimise your sail package.