PURSUING PERFECTION: TOM GILLARD AND THE ONE DESIGN TEAM
Rightfully known as “the champions among us,” the North Sails One Design roster is a remarkable collection of world-class sailmakers.
For North Sails sailmaker Tom Gillard, the British dinghy master and a key member of the North Sails global One Design team, February’s running of the Fireball World Championships off Melbourne, Australia did not commence as planned. That’s what happens when the shipping container carrying your boat, rig, and hardware fails to show up for the event, and you must quickly shift to Plan B: competing in a borrowed boat.
“I’m not going to lie,” said the understated Gillard. “It was a bit stressful.”
But surely, having won 37 major championships in ten separate classes in his remarkable and ongoing racing career, this wasn’t the first time Gillard had gone into battle in similar circumstances, right?
“No,” he said. “Never. It’s never happened before.”
Well, in that case, it would’ve been fairly easy to excuse less-than-stellar results from the 34-year-old Gillard. Even champions get a mulligan once in a while. Which is precisely what did not occur. Instead, with crew Andy Thompson, Gillard blitzed the bloody event; with his two throw-outs, his scorecard for the 10-race series recorded nothing but podium finishes, including a hat trick of bullets, easily good enough for his sixth Fireball World title. “We’re quite happy about it,” said Gillard, laughing. But there wasn’t much time to celebrate. For Gillard, the next major regatta was and is always, literally, just around the corner.
Want proof? In mid-March, Gillard was asked what his sailing schedule looked like for 2024. “In terms of week-long events, we’re talking six full weeks and then every weekend between now and October,” he said. “And those are all events, not training. I never train, I only race. I pretty much don’t do anything other than sail, really.”
It was Gillard’s single-minded pursuit of excellence that caught the attention of Paul Hobson, the head of the One Design squad at North Sails. When Hobson reached out to Gillard several years ago, he was working for a U.K. competitor of North Sails. “When you’re in the business of recruiting talent, the first thing you look at is who’s out there in the marketplace,” said Hobson. “Tom was obviously very talented and you could see the potential with his sailing ability but he was a rare commodity in that he wasn’t only a world-class sailor, but also a sailmaker.”
Hobson caught Gillard at an ideal moment in his journey as a sailor. Tom said, “Paul sent me a text message and asked me if I might be interested in coming to the south coast, to the North Sails loft in Gosport, and continuing my dream of being involved in lots of different classes, which wasn’t the case at my previous job. I wanted to sail as much possible and make great sails for all those classes.”
It proved to be a perfect fit for both parties. And Hobson certainly had the background to recognize top talent and provide them opportunities to shine. A two-time World Champion in the Enterprise class, during the early stages of his three-decade career at North Sails, Hobson was heavily involved in Olympic classes, particularly with the U.K. team as a sailmaker and coach during their wildly successful string of success in the early 2000s, when the company supplied all the sails for four-time Gold Medalist Ben Ainslie and two-time Gold winner Iain Percy, among many others. From there, he pivoted into the North Sails One Design program, and for the last two years has spearheaded the company’s deep international roster of all-star racing sailors.
“Now I sort of oversee all the aspects of One Design globally,” he said. “Everything from linking the design operations, production, distribution, and sales to pulling the different departments together and overseeing all of it.”
Rightfully known as “the champions among us,” the North Sails One Design roster is a remarkable collection of world-class sailmakers. And as Hobson pointed out, having a deep stable of rock stars at the ready is embedded in the North Sails DNA, going right back to founder Lowell North.
“This structure was part of Lowell’s vision,” said Hobson. “When he began making sails with the Olympic classes, he assembled what he called his ‘Tigers’ at the time: Vince Brun. Gary Wiseman. John Marshall. And the philosophy hasn’t really changed. We have a team of highly skilled people who can not only go race at the highest level but also race with the goal of designing and developing the fastest sails in the world.”
In addition to designers Ruairidh Scott, Rich Bell in Great Britain and Mike Marshall, Serena Village in the U.S., Hobson listed this impressive international squad of One Design specialists: Hugo Roca (Spain); Charlie Cumbley, Ben Saxton (Great Britain); Dereck Scott (New Zealand); Theis Palm (Denmark); Giulio Desiderato and Riccardo Defelice (Italy); Gaetan Aunette (France); Noel Drennan (Australia); and Allan Terhune, Eric Doyle, Will Welles, Jackson Benvenutti, Brian Hayes and Jeffrey Hayden (USA).
And, of course, England’s Tom Gillard. He started early. His father, Alan, was an accomplished sailor who had his son crewing alongside him in a Mirror dinghy at the ripe old age of 2. Gillard moved on to Toppers, 420s, and the usual youth platforms, but did not specialize in any of them. “That was always my dad’s philosophy,” he said. “The more different types of boats you sail, the broader the spectrum of sailing you can excel at.”
Although Gillard readily admits that his passion has always been about dinghy sailing. “I’ve never been on a boat with a keel, ever,” he said, smiling. “Last year I was nominated for a Yachtsman of the Year award, having never been on a yacht. It’s quite amusing to me.
“I sail single-handers and double-handers,” he continued. “I think sailing as many different boats as possible is key to being an all-rounder, which I consider myself. I think having broad experience in many classes is key to that. I would argue that I could probably jump into most boats and make them go reasonably well.”
A quick scan of the classes in which he’s won major championships confirms that statement: Fireball, Solo, Merlin Rocket, Scorpion, Graduate, Streaker. Perhaps surprisingly, given his overwhelming success in the Fireball, it’s not his favorite boat. “That would be the Scorpion, a national U.K. class,” he said. “It’s very over-canvassed, a powerful kind of rig that you can do a lot with to harness its power. There are lots of ropes to pull to manipulate the sails, making it quick across a wide range of conditions. You want to be able to sail in as many conditions as you can across the whole wind range, and make it ideal.”
Yet, like his colleagues at North Sails, Gillard makes sure to share what he learns with his fellow competitors; raising the level of the game for all involved.
“Being in the R&D department, it’s always about taking in feedback from other people, as well as what I think,” he said. “The goal is to make the fastest sails possible. I’m always honest about my settings and helping everyone else around me. I want everyone to know what I’m doing and thinking, so hopefully they can take that stuff onboard and we can go out on the racecourse and we’ll have a more level playing field for using that kit.”
Which brings us back to where this story began, at last February’s Fireball Worlds. “We had an inkling beforehand that the container might not show up, so we ended up taking a spinnaker in our hand luggage and a load of blocks and ropes and tools to effectively make the boat ready,” he said. “Our borrowed boat was brand new, had never been in the water, but my crew Andy is a boat fitter so we spent much of the week of the pre-Worlds working on it, 14 or 15 hours a day, getting it right.”
And then, a funny thing happened on the way to the actual Championship week. “We did a race a day in the pre-Worlds and we’d go out and things would fall off or wouldn’t work so we’d come back in and fix them,” he said. “But we managed to win each race.”
And with that, the Fireball Worlds got underway. “We knew the boat was fast, but it turned out it was electrically fast, actually as fast as our normal one,” Gillard said. “We did find out the boat was quite heavy and overweight and all sorts of things, so we had a lot of worries there. But we did work a hell of a lot of hours to get it raceable.”
And ten races later, when all was said and done, Gillard was once again the Fireball World Champion. So, all that hard work beforehand paid off?
“Oh, absolutely,” he said. “I don’t regret any of it. I’d like to have not spent the first week doing so much boat work, but that’s just the way it is, isn’t it? I don’t regret a thing.”
And that was that. One more fresh notch on Tom Gillard’s impressive Title tiller.
