North’s Edge is An All-Purpose Sail For Club Racers

Endurance Edge, an aramid and polyester 3Di blend, is a new all-purpose offering from North Sails, intended for mid-sized crossovers that race and cruise. Andrew Jowett / North Sails

Like many things in life, it’s easier to meet the needs of those who know exactly what they need, and this is especially true with modern sailmaking where offerings tend to either serve hardcore racers that demand perfection and power, or, at the opposite end, pennywise cruisers that milk every last nautical mile out of their sails.

Between these two extremes, says North Sails’ Tim Healy, is a broader group of sailors that simply want both—sailors across the sport that compete in local races and cruise or daysail at any given chance. When it comes to a sail inventory, they want the best for both worlds, and North Sails says it now has an option with its 3Di Endurance Edge. The benefits are simple, Healy says: Edge is a technical sail that’s lightweight, easy to trim and durable.

Think of Endurance Edge as having the blended benefits of North’s racier carbon 3Di Raw and its 3Di Endurance offering, which is intended for bigger boats—40 feet and upwards. Edge, they say, is explicitly designed for mid-sized boats and crossovers in the 25- to 40-foot range.

“We’re getting more and more requests from our sales team for customers looking for something they can put on their boat at the beginning of the season, do the Wednesday night series or the occasional regatta, and also go cruising,” Healy says. 

What Makes An Endurance Edge Sail Unique

Endurance Edge sails are built in the same way as all of North’s 3Di sails, on a full-size three-dimensional mold with fiber tapes laid according to the sail design’s desired shape and load paths. Once the tapes are laid, the sail is cured into its flying shape and finished. The magic is in the composition of the fiber tapes, and the many blends that have been developed over the years for different applications.

North’s early Endurance offerings (with blends of Dyneema, carbon and aramid), targeted for boats 40 feet and larger, don’t extend to smaller boats because of specific material limitations. As Healy explains, “Once you get 40 feet and over, it becomes more of a Dyneema blend, and it is better for those sails because they’re bigger, heavier, and they need the higher modulus.”

For reference, North’s high-performance Endurance 780 material, which is a blend of Dyneema, carbon and aramid, has a stated Denier-Per-Inch range of 6,300 to 102,200 (a measure of the fabric’s relative weight and strength). The range for Endurance edge tops out at 20,150 DPI.

With Edge, intended for day sailing and club racing applications, Tim Healy says, the secret sauce is a blend of aramid and polyester. “The aramid is for high modulus [stretch resistance], for that racing sail shape-holding characteristic, and then it’s got the polyester for durability.”

With Edge, intended for day sailing and club racing applications, Healy says, the secret sauce is a blend of aramid and polyester. “The aramid is for high modulus [stretch resistance], for that racing sail shape-holding characteristic, and then it’s got the polyester for durability.”

Edge sails are built in North’s Sri Lanka facilities and their construction involves precise application of tape layers for weight and load management—that’s the concept of 3Di, which puts strength into the sail where it’s required without adding excess material and weight where it is not required. 

“As you go up and down in constructions in 3Di, you’re essentially reducing and adding tapes,” sail designer Mike Marshall explains, “specifically in the corners and the load directions.”

The North Sails Materials Lab in Minden, Nevada, he adds, continuously tests and refines these material combinations, resulting in an array of fiber-tape types for highly customized sails for grand-prix programs. “There’s a huge science behind that,” Marshall says. 

Different tape types are specifically designed to work together, Marshall adds, as not all fibers are compatible. The material selection is not simply about scaling up or down but finding the right combination that works for specific boat sizes and sailing conditions. For Edge, the aramid and polyester blend is just right. 

One of the key benefits of 3Di Endurance Edge sails, Healy says, is their ease of trimming. “What happens with a Dacron main when the pressure hits, is that it twists open and depowers slightly because the cloth gives a little bit,” he says. “If I give you a completely carbon structure in the sail [3Di Raw, for example], the sail doesn’t move at all. So, what’s the inevitable fact? You have to be active with the sheet in order to get the sail to open and twist when the pressure hits.”

In other words, Edge sails are designed to provide the right balance for owners and sail trimmers–there’s enough structure to maintain the design shape, but the sail responds appropriately to wind pressure, making them more forgiving and easier to trim. That means less fussing over halyard tension, control lines and sheet adjustments, and more time enjoying the sail and going fast. There’s also less worry about beating up the sails with everyday usage.

“You don’t have to feel guilty using your race main to go cruising for the weekend,” Healy says, “That’s what Edge is for.”

For care and preservation of Endurance Edge sails Healy and Marshall recommend UV covers for sails that live on furlers and booms, but for protection while flying, Edge also has an integrated surface tape applied to the sail before curing.

For owners nostalgic for traditional white sails, no such luck. For the sake of simplicity, Healy says, black is currently the only option.

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