Lowell North

Lowell North Orton (* 2. December 1929 in Springfield , Massachusetts ; † 2. June 2019 in Point Loma , California ) was an American engineer, businessman and Olympic champion in sailing . North also founded the company North Sails, which it claims to be the world's leading sailmaker .

Life and North Sails

Company logo

Neck of a headsail bearing the North Sails emblem

Lowell North studied at the University of California in Berkeley engineering . After graduating, he founded North Sails in the coastal city of San Diego in 1957 in a room no bigger than a living room, "but big enough to make a star boat mainsail," Lowell North said. North Sails developed into the world's leading sailmaker today. The wide range of international contacts that Lowell North had gained as a skipper helped develop the company . He learned, for example, Hans Beilken, the sailmaker Beilken from the Lower Saxony Lemwerder , on the sailing trip aboard the Germania yachts of Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach in the United States know.

Olympic star class

North Sails today has 63 main offices and 56 service and sales stations in 29 countries. North Sails is particularly a leader in sail design and equipment for the Olympic boat classes . In addition, many of the America's Cup teams were among the company's customers. To meet the high demand for 3DL high-tech membrane sails , North Sails operates a 78,000 square meter 3DL manufacturing facility in Minden , Nevada . With the granting of the manufacturing licenses for windsurfing sails (1981) and kites (2001), the North Sails brand also achieved enormous popularity and awareness in other water sports. These products have been continued under the brand name Duotone since 2019 .

Sporting successes

Together with Richard Deaver and Charles Rogers , Lowell North won the bronze medal in the dragon class at the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo Bay . At the 1968 Games , he started in the sailing waters of Acapulco in the strong class and became Olympic champion with his sailing partner Peter Barrett , who was Vice President of North Sails from 1973 to 1985.

These Olympic successes were joined by five wins at the sailing world championships in the star boat. In 1977 Lowell North drove Sparkman & Stephens' Enterprise Yacht in the America's Cup qualifying races , but failed.

Web links

• Lowell North in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )
• North Sails, sailing
• North Sails, Windsurfing (obsolete, retrieved from archive.org)
• North Sails, Kitesurfing (obsolete, retrieved from archive.org)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Carsten Kemmling: "He was something special" . Obituary in Segelreporter, June 4, 2019. Accessed June 5, 2019.
2. ↑ ^{a b c} Homepage North Sails, History
3. ^ Homepage North Sails
4. ↑ North Windsurf success story. Retrieved February 6, 2019 . 
5. ↑ Duotonesports. Retrieved February 6, 2019 (American English). 
6. ↑ databaseolympics.com ( Memento of the original from February 21, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 1964 Summer Olympics - Tokyo, Japan - Sailing 
7. ↑ databaseolympics.com ( Memento of the original from September 29, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 1968 Summer Olympics - Mexico City, Mexico - Sailing 
8. ↑ sport-komplett.de, sailing
9. ↑ America's Cup Charters, Enterprise ( Memento of the original from January 20, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.