Hyde Sailors – Stuart Jardine
by Louise Crowden, Pro-Action 29 Jun 2008 14:26 BST
Hyde Sailors – Stuart Jardine © Hyde Sails
Hyde Sails have a continuous programme of development with a very wide range of boats from the smallest of dinghies to cruising yachts. One of the most important aspects of this is for the Hyde team to work with some of the key sailors in each class. This provides excellent feedback to the design team and also Hyde Sails are proud to support some of the top dinghy sailors.
We would like to introduce you to some of the Hyde Sailors and will focus on each key sailor to give you some idea of why they have chosen Hyde, what makes them tick and their racing success.
We recently caught up with J24 and XOD sailor Stuart Jardine. Stuart was freshly back from J24 World’s in Sardinia and told us about his experience with Hyde Sails.
Stuart started racing 67 years ago at the age of 8 sailing in XODs. With 25 years of Olympic Campaigning primarily in International Stars. He has been racing X boats for some 42 years in all and J24s since 1985.
We asked Stuart why Hyde sails, he said, “I have always liked their aim, attitude and determination to perfect the designs”. When Stuart first started using Hyde sails the developments with the sails were major, however now he sees the changes are smaller and more subtle as the team try and tweak each class for optimum performance.
Many of the sail design team have sailed with Stuart who welcomes them on his boats so that they can ensure developments are kept up to date.
The past few years has seen Stuart have a great deal of success with his Hyde Sails. In 2007 he won the J24 UK Nationals, Bermuda Race week, The Greek Open Nationals, The South European Championships and The Primo Cup in Monaco. In the XOD’s he was 3rd in the 2007 Nationals and won the Lymington Division Cock boat and the Sat and Wed points series.
We look forward to reporting on further success stories from Stuart in the future.
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