Neil Pryde soon turned over all relations with us to Geoff Cornish. Together we would plot and plan how to make the most out of the Hawaii connection.  Geoff was only about twenty seven, and had done some very creative marketing in his lead up to Hong Kong. He came there looking for a change after developing a perfume business in the South Pacific. A successful venture into family billiards in Hong Kong ended up getting wiped out by a new law in Hong Kong that controlled the billiard parlors. After that, he answered an ad from Neil Pryde International Sailmakers. He used the fact that he was into dinghies back in his home of Malta, and was familiar with sailing. He got the job.

This was very important for Neil Pryde, and especially MauiSails. Geoff could see that he needed to remake Neil Pryde Sails and change the way people thought about it. He was going to use us to create new image of, and for, Neil Pryde.

First we would make some entirely new looking designs, use the most modern materials, and show them at the Salon in Paris. This was where the final TriPanel ideas really came together, and the energy of the whole crazy thing was already getting tied into Geoff’s rapidly growing commercial dreams.

When we first made the deal with Neil, we had already been through a couple of lessons about ‘design fees’ with HiFLy and Windsurfing Japan. Geoffrey was ready for that and got Neil to go for 10% royalty because Neil said he thought we would be lucky to sell a thousand sails. This will feature later as the relationship gets tighter.

And I was waiting on a big event to take place in my life too. I was now married to Theresa Breedlove, and was about to be a father to a big happy boy named Zeppo. We lived on the beach off Stable Road, had all our gear in the yard, and came home and sailed for lunch and in the evening until dark. Zeppo was practically born in the water of Maui’s North Shore.

When Geoffrey left Hong Kong it was to come back to Hawaii and get our patterns together to make sails for Neil Pryde.  Meanwhile, Windsurfing Japan was making their sails too. As the fall season approached, Cornish said that we needed to get some sails into the market, and arranged to have some of our PanAm designs made available in France. As it would happen, two of those sails got into the hands of Pascal Maka, and he took them and our first hip harness to the Brest and Weymouth Speed events. At Weymouth, he set a new Sailing Speed record at just over 27 knots, an improvement of nearly ten percent. This small event would kick start us away from the idea that Hawaii was just about waves. Now we were speed sailing, and we barely knew it.