Full Tilt At Zim Sailing

What We Know

• Zim Sailing has significantly expanded its scope by securing licenses to build class-legal boats for both the International Sunfish Class Association (ISCA) and the International Laser Class Association (ILCA), thereby bringing production of these prominent designs back to the United States.
• The company’s vertical integration approach sets it apart, as Zim constructs its boats from raw materials in-house, producing masts, rigging, and various components, which sustains high-quality production and supports its distribution network.
• Despite the logistical challenges and costs associated with supporting major sailing events, Zim maintains a strong presence at regattas nationwide to enhance brand visibility, further solidifying its role as a leader in the dinghy sailing market.

On a hot and muggy late June morning, the bay doors at Zim Sailing’s facilities in Bristol, Rhode Island, are wide open. Large industrial floor fans whirring at full speed push the sharp aroma of resin into the still air. The unmistakable smell is fiberglass boatbuilding, which has been apace since the midnight shift clocked in. The operation’s energetic CEO George Yioulos, who arrived at 5 A.M., as he usually does, would say that the smell is not just boatbuilding, it’s a bustling company breathing life into the sport. By the end of the day, there will be an assortment of 420s and FJs, ILCAs and ISCAs in various stages before being rolled off to another building nearby for finishing.

Starting Line Sailing CEO George Yioulos alongside new Zim-built ILCA and ISCA dinghies ready to be shipped to customers in early July. Dave Reed/Sailing World

“Everything in here is presold,” says Yioulos, gesturing at rows and stacks of gleaming white hulls as we step from Zim’s reception area into the hustle of Zim’s warehouse and assembly facilities. “It’s just always a scramble. Fit it out. Get it out. Build the boats. Get it out of here.”

While “scramble” may sound like production at Zim is rush job, I’m assured it’s anything but. Every boat is given the proper quality-control once over before it leaves the building because nothing seems to annoy Yioulos more than than a warranty return or repair, which takes time and staff away from the flow.

This constant state of frenzy inside the large steel building that once housed Hall Spars and Rigging reflects the remarkable growth of Zim Sailing, which has emerged from humble beginnings to become the formidable player in the small-craft sailing market. Founded in 2008 by Steve Perry, a former production manager at Vanguard Sailboats, Zim started when Perry struck out on his own in the middle of a recession.

In its first year, Zim began building Optimist dinghies with a partner in China. By early 2009, they expanded to Club 420s, shipping tooling to China to broaden their product line. When uncertain where the next order might come from, the parts business kept things afloat. To gain visibility and make the business viable, Perry and his sales partner Bob Adam traveled extensively, logging more than 25,000 miles a year to attend more than 25 regattas with their trailer in tow—a portable showroom for youth sailors who forgot or broke something they needed.

Zim Staff Keeping Pace With Demand

The hustle lives on. On the day of our visit, in Zim’s parking lot are multiple 40-foot storage containers, three large wrapped box trailers, triple-stack trailers, and piles of rain-soaked cardboard boxes full of recently-delivered aluminum extrusions. There’s simply no more room inside the building.

“We’re doing over a thousand boats a year now,” Yioulos says. “We’re building about three boats a day.” This daily demand includes not just their own builds but also shuffling boats and parts they import and distribute, such as RS boats from the UK and Fighter Optimists from Poland.

The production facility is the heart of what makes Zim unique in American boatbuilding. Walking through the shop, Yioulos is eager to demonstrate their boatbuilding process, which begins at midnight when the first shift arrives to remove previous day’s parts from the molds and spray the gel coat that needs to become tacky before the next shift arrives at 6 A.M.

“What they’re doing now is taking the fiberglass that’s cut to the pattern,” Yioulos explains, watching workers carefully lay and soak cloth into the hull of a new ISCA. “There’s a lot of pieces, stacks, reinforcement, all this sort of stuff.”

The process involves wetting out fiberglass with resin and carefully removing air to create a solid laminate. For their ISCA boats, Zim made a conscious decision with the class to build them the traditional way rather than using the vacuum bagging techniques applied for the ILCAs.

An Opportunity To Improve A Classic

“The decision was made by them, and we agreed, which is ‘let’s build it the way it’s historically always been built,’” Yioulos says. “How Vanguard built it, one-design—let’s build it the same way.” This approach, he notes, keeps costs down and avoids “technology creep.”

But tradition doesn’t mean the same old. Zim introduced significant improvements to their boats, particularly in areas that historically failed in earlier designs. There’s aluminum backing plates, additional coring in deck, and better closed-cell foam. Yioulos points out the new reinforced mast step design as a game changer.

“This tube is where your mast goes,” he says. “On the Vanguard one it was tiny and wasn’t affixed very well. We built our own with brand-new tooling. We made the flange much bigger and built a V-shaped structure to give this entire thing about 10 times the bonding surface that the Vanguard boats used to have.”

Such attention to detail has earned Zim significant recognition and contracts. In the past two years, the company secured licenses to build class-legal boats for both the International Sunfish Class Association (ISCA) and the International Laser Class Association (ILCA), bringing production of these iconic designs back to Rhode Island. For the ILCA, Zim completed a rigorous certification process with both the class association and World Sailing to ensure their boats are fully compliant with ILCA regulations, and legal for use in ILCA events. Same goes for the ISCA.

Making What They Need

The company’s expansion isn’t limited to just building boats, however. They’ve got their own pieces of the supply chain sorted in-house, where they build masts, rigging packages, rudders, tillers and pre-spliced control line kits, among other things. The operation, under the parent company Starting Line Sailing, now includes Dwyer Mast and Rigging, which finishes spars and hardware. As we walk though, a new batch of ISCA spars are being rolled across the cement floor one at a time to check for straightness, and in one corner of the facility, Carlos, a 30-year machinist, is saddled up to industrial-era milling machines and presses, producing an assortment of parts. Today he’s milling and assembling bronze ISCA goosneck fittings by hand.

“We get the bare metal that comes in, and everything else happens here,” Yioulos explains. “We get the metal, and then we go nuts.”

This vertical integration is a point of pride: “That’s the stuff that we do that I think makes us different,” he says. “We’re not just ‘oh, we buy some stuff and sell it.’ We get the bare aluminum. We turn it into a mast. We make the tangs. We make the hounds. We make a lot.”

Supporting the sailing community at events represents another significant aspect of Zim’s operation, though it comes with substantial challenges. With five trucks and trailers, Zim’s team travels constantly to regattas across the country all year long. Bob Adam, director of institutional sales, is still at it, a frequent, if not VIP, visitor to Interstate 95’s quirky South of the Border rest stop.

“It’s marketing,” Yioulos says frankly about the regatta support. “Some events, you make money. Most events, you basically break even. Some events lose money.” The drain on resources is significant, but visibility is essential.

The commitment to supporting major regattas is exemplified by their preparation for the coming ISCA Worlds in Ecuador. “We’re building 68 boats,” Yioulos says. “We’re shipping them all down, chartering them out, custom sails, all that stuff. Flying two people down for three weeks, housing, all that stuff, then you gotta ship the boats, try to sell them, or ship them back. The logistics beat you up.”

And the schedule never lets up. “People think there’s an off-season,” Yioulos says, “but in the winter, you go south.”

A Mission Beyond Building Boats

Such dizzying logistics are what keeps Zim’s President, Bo Williams, up at night and on the road aplenty. As another Vanguard alum who is now a shareholder we run into him mid-tour. He’s moving briskly, dripping with sweat as he’s floating from one task to the other. He’s just back from an overnight run of a trailer of boats to Connecticut and detours to say hello. “A lot going on,” Williams says, “busy times.”

In a blink, he disappears into the warehouse maze, one of its many moving parts.

While there doesn’t appear to be room to do so, Zim continues to expand. They’re not yet to scale, Yioulos says, but their product line now includes 14 different boats for training, recreational, and performance sailing. He would someday love to get his hands back on the Hobie sailing brands (another story for another day), and that would get them there, but for now he’s got his hands full.

Boat building, by the way, is not what he wants his company to be known for. “While I do consider us to be boatbuilders—it’s what we do, and we’re good at it—but for me, the whole thing is about getting people sailing, keeping them on that journey, and making it easy. That means that if we take care of the customers, we take care of the dealers [of which there are “50-ish”], we take care of the class, it’ll work out. And if I take care of my people, and my people build a great boat, the customers will be happy, and they’ll take care of the business.”

Before we leave him to it, he makes a run to the supply closet next door to his office to get a box of latex gloves and a resin mixing pot that one of his builder has asked him for during our tour. But he has an impending call with the ILCA class about a 4.7 sail redesign. So, I volunteer to deliver the goods on my way out. The builders are surprised when I hand them over, with one asking, “He made you bring them down?”

“Nah,” I respond, “I just wanted one more good whiff. I love the smell of my next boat.”

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