BREAKING THE MOLD: SAILOR, SAILMAKER & DESIGNER SERENA VILAGE
Making her way through the ranks, Serena is combining her passion for all aspects of sailing to become one of the young Tigers at North Sails.
“I feel so lucky to have a job that combines my passions so perfectly – working in the loft and then competing on the racecourse alongside customers who use our products.”
So says Serena Vilage, a sailmaker and outstanding sailor who is making her way through the ranks on the water and in the loft to become one of the young Tigers at North Sails.
Hailing from Port Townsend, Washington, Vilage, 28, brings the same qualities to her work in the loft at Portsmouth as she does as part of some of the finest one-design crews in North America. And when you talk to her what comes across is a young woman with a hard-working, no-compromise philosophy who is committed to continuously improving in all aspects of what she does.
“I’m a big believer that if you put your head down, work hard, and show your skills and determination, you will be able to find success,” she says. But there is modesty too in an individual who is close to breaking the mold in the still male-dominated world of grand prix sailmaking.
Serena at the helm of J105 Young American, racing the 2020 Ida Lewis Yacht Club distance race.
“When I look around at the roster of everyone who works with me, I definitely feel there are some big boots to fill – it’s a pretty impressive group both globally and locally, and I definitely feel that push to do the best I can and always be learning and improving,” explains Vilage.
On the racecourse, Vilage has established herself as among the very best – male or female – one-design crews in the sport, with a growing list of titles to her name. In Melges 24, she was a mainstay of Kevin Welch’s all-conquering Mikey crew helmed by Jeff Madrigali, during a five-year stint that saw them winning titles all over America and around the world. More recently she has been a key player on Jim Cunningham’s Lifted Etchells team.
In 2023, with Vilage trimming main downwind and calling breeze upwind, alongside jib trimmer Erik Shampain and tactician Steve Hunt, Lifted swept the Miami winter series and then the spring series in San Diego, before placing third at the worlds in Miami. During a busy season, Vilage was also part of Richard Reid’s Zingara team that won the Melges 24 North American championship at Toronto.
Serena has been a key player on Jim Cunningham’s Lifted Etchells team, winning the West Coast Spring Series in San Diego alongside jib trimmer Erik Shampain and tactician Steve Hunt.
Hunt has seen what she can do. He likes the fact that Vilage is always among the first in the boat park, ready to help set the boat up and he calls her a super-professional. “She is an amazing sailor, incredibly smart and a hard worker,” he says. “She does five million jobs on the boat and does them all very well. And it’s a bonus that Serena’s a sailmaker with North because she can work on sails and she and Dave Ullman (the team coach) might go to the loft and do a tweak here and there, and she’s very knowledgeable about all things sails.” Tellingly, he adds, Vilage keeps her counsel on the water. “She’s pretty quiet, so when she talks we listen,” he said.
She may be quiet, but Vilage is competitive. Just consider this reflection on the frustration of being at the front of the boat, not the back. (It reminds us that one of her ambitions is to do more helming). “For me,” she said of her Melges and Etchells racing, “the hardest part is that my role on the boat is a bit more hands-off because I am not a full-time trimmer or driver. So I have the feeling of wanting to beat someone but not really being able to do anything immediate to make or break it. But the whole team is one moving part and everyone’s input is crucial, so you just have to do your best, make sure every jibe is perfect, every take-down is perfect, the kite is never twisted and just do your part perfectly.”
By her own admission, Vilage was a “shy and stubborn” child. She comes from a family with a strong sailing pedigree and grew up in Port Townsend sailing everything from El Toros and Lasers to exploring the San Juan islands on local cruising yachts. Her father Alain – who is French – was a professional yacht captain and later worked as a marine surveyor. Her mom, Laura, meanwhile, also had a captain’s license and was part of The US Women’s Challenge crew that aimed to do the Whitbread round-the-world race in 1989 alongside Tracy Edwards’s Maiden, but never quite made it for lack of sponsorship.
Serena joined North Sails in 2022, starting her tenure as a sailmaker on the loft floor, and transitioned into the design department in 2023.
Her parents taught Vilage there was nothing she could not do and, from her mother especially, she inherited a strong belief in the importance of developing opportunities for women in realms where men have traditionally dominated. “She never told me ‘you can’t do this because you’re a girl.’ Both my parents were always very supportive when I showed interest in any activity. There was never a limitation due to gender. I remember as a kid on the playground wanting to play kickball with all the boys and being told ‘no, you can’t – girls are not allowed.’ And I was like ‘what do you mean?’ So my parents always instilled that value in me that there was never a question of gender and if you put your mind to it, you can make it happen,” explains Vilage.
In her teens sailing was more of a hobby because her big thing was swimming at which Vilage excelled, competing at state level in 100 metres breaststroke, 200 metres individual medley and relay. It’s a sport she still loves – she swims several times a week, alongside cycling and walking her two standard poodles – and it showed her the value of training and discipline, qualities that transferred into her sailing career.
That blossomed after Vilage worked on classic yachts and went to school to study marine tech at Skagit Valley College in Anacortes, north of Seattle. “I can’t say one person was a role model, but I did follow the great French single-hander Florence Arthaud, and I was quite inspired by Maiden and what they did because that was the same era as my mom when she was sailing,” remembers Vilage. “But I never had idols either in swimming or sailing; I had a larger appreciation for everyone who had done it and forged my own way a little bit.”
Having sailed on anything she could get her hands on – FJs and Vanguard 15s at high school, and then later Santa Cruz 27s, J105s, Corsair 31 tris, all the way up to TP52s – Vilage started an apprenticeship at the Ullman Sails loft in Anacortes. And it was not long before her reputation as a talented foredeck hand found her in demand with Madrigali’s crew.
In 2023, Lifted clinched victory in both the North American Championship and the Coral Reef Cup for the Etchells class.
She credits the Mikey skipper and North Sails rockstar, as an influential mentor. “He has taught me a lot about discipline when taking care of the boat and showed me a how-to rule book for being a pro sailor because he has been in the game for a very long time,” says Vilage. She also credits Ullman: “He is such a high-caliber coach who has done America’s Cups, Olympics, and all of that and is a legendary sailmaker. He definitely taught me the higher edge of sail racing and, being a sailmaker, has taught me a lot about sail shape and trim.”
Having moved to Newport and joined North in 2022, Vilage is now learning the ropes of one-design sailmaking and is currently working on existing designs, doing updates and modifications, and learning to use the company’s design suite. She loves it and dreams of being among the first women to design sails for a grand prix team. “I would love eventually, when I am a more senior designer, to work for a team and design sails for them – an offshore campaign, like an IMOCA or something. That would be pretty awesome,” she says.
She is already getting a feel for a skill that combines technical knowledge with the on-the-water experience of a competitive racer. “The computer can do so much, “ she says. “You can feed in all the data, all the rig dimensions, the boat type, and everything and say exactly what type of sail you want. But at the end of the day, to get the sailing performance you want, you need a strong sailing background to understand details like leech profile and twist, for example – it’s hard to have a computer do that, so you need a human understanding and background in sailing for sure,” she says.
What’s striking about Vilage is her enthusiasm for the sport in all its forms. She is an accomplished delivery skipper or crew, continues to race in top-level one-design fleets, but also finds time for fun sailing at home on VX One sportsboats, campaigning a Moore 24 with her boyfriend or racing on the 12Metre, Onawa, captained by Vilage’s friend Kelsy Patnaude.
Magenta Project panel discussion on “The Future of Female Leadership” with Cécile Andrieu, Jane Millman, Serena Vilage, and Cole Brauer.
In recent years Vilage has developed a great friendship with the new female star of American solo offshore sailing, Cole Brauer, with whom she has sailed a lot and has now become her sailmaker. Vilage worked on modifications and repairs to Brauer’s sails in the build-up to the start of the Global Solo Challenge.
She says she has “mad respect” for what Brauer has achieved in becoming the first American female to race solo, non-stop, and unassisted around the world, but cannot see herself following her lead. “I would be happy to do some double-handed offshore racing, for sure,” she says. “I think that would be pretty intriguing. I do love IMOCAs – it would be very cool to go racing on one in some capacity. But doing a solo round-the-world race isn’t really jumping out at me as something I want to do.”
Another element in her working life is Vilage’s involvement with the Magenta Project which helps to develop opportunities in sailing for girls and women. It’s an initiative that fits perfectly with Vilage’s own philosophy and what she has inherited from her mom. She was first introduced to the project at the Copa del Rey a couple of years ago where she raced with an all-women crew on board a J80. More recently she has appeared at a Magenta Project panel and networking event in New York on “the future of female leadership.”
“I think it’s working,” said Vilage. “If you look even 10 years ago there were way fewer women in sailing than there are now. So it’s slowly happening. It’s nice to see that, when boats are being put together, I’m not always the only woman in the boatpark. And I think the Magenta Project does a great job connecting women globally with people who would otherwise be unreachable and give them opportunities, so we need these initiatives.”
Allan Terhune, who runs the one-design division at North, says Vilage fits the mold of the kind of people the company wants – dedicated, talented with unique skill sets and personalities. “There aren’t many female sail designers and obviously within the pro sailing world it’s tough too. It’s not an easy road and Serena traverses it well. She is a model for a lot of people to follow for sure,” he said.
“She didn’t come here with any preconceived notions necessarily so everything has been ‘what can I do? How can I do it?’ And figuring it out. And she has brought some fresh ideas to the table, so it’s been really good,” he added.
Author: Ed Gorman
