With the development cycle for production designs taking on its own life, we were still struggling to keep the whole show floating. We still hadn’t seen any return from the work on the TriRadials, and the local sail business was a constant jamming affair. By this time we had five or six people working exclusively on windsurfing sail production and repairs, two who did nothing but yacht sail work (still a big part of our turnover), and several more who did whatever was needed. Our little shop space in the basement was filling up with the things that people wanted us to have in stock, and our shop guy, Ted Andrus, was in heaven, selling it all.

We were forced to rent out the downstairs to a small T-shirt and sign shop. That was great. The ideas for designs were leaping out at us and soon we were making all kinds of off the wall shirts. This would continue as a big part of our image business and offered a great way to express ourselves beyond sail design.

This was one of the first t-shirts we ever did with Island Sign and Kevin O'Brien 

The division of the space on the ground floor also forced us to create a useful warehouse. Our role as the Hawaiian distributor for Neil Pryde was growing quickly, and soon we needed a lot more room to control the stock. Damn. This was getting to be a real business and could have ruined all the fun if we weren’t careful. Fortunately for us, we had good people helping us out, and we made it work.

 This shirt was made by the Neil Pryde French distributor. You can see what they thought of the whole thing.

 
In April of 1983 there was another O’Neill Wave event. These were now getting to be very high profile, with competitors from all over the world finding their way to the big surf and good wind of Hookipa. People were now coming from Europe and the events had big sponsors. The quaint little world of our local family was being blown into the beginnings of a circus. The days when we were the only folks out sailing were long gone. Our clients came from everywhere you could imagine.  And they wanted what they wanted as soon as possible. That kept us maxed out making sails and keeping the designs up to date.

This was my desk in the old loft office. We built all this furniture out of old doors and scrap wood. It did te job for almost twenty years. 

 
By this time Fred Haywood had figured out that this big French guy, Pascal Maka, had broken the record at Brest on a Sailboards Maui wave board that had actually been a mistake. Jimmy Lewis had gouged a hunk out of the bottom of a board that he was shaping for someone, and to fix it in the blank, he cut concaves and a small ‘opihi’ dent, as we called the small concave that was right under the mast. A proper description would be “a spiral V with double concave”. At least that’s what Jimmy called it anyway.

 
So Fred came to me and said, “If this French guy can buy a stock board with a screwed up bottom and go break a record, then I should be able to do it even better if we make custom boards that are correct and tested. Will you make me some speed sails so I can go to France and England and whip his ass?”

 
Well I had no idea about speed trials or speed sailing other than the goal was to go as fast as possible for 500 meters. It sounded pretty simple, and straightforward. So I told Fred what he had to do was pass on the wave sailing for awhile and really train for speed. We made him a couple of our latest prototypes (TriRadial wave sails), and he would go down the coast again and again, just ripping in the open ocean. I would see him out there every day, and it soon became apparent that he was totally serious about his. Fred was an Olympic caliber athlete (world record swimming), and knew what it took to be in top form for an athletic challenge. He did it all. Diet, aerobic conditioning, and mostly sailing, sailing, sailing. Now we had some reason to be making speed sails.