V for. Velman (fiber oriented sails originated here). Interview with Alberto Manfredini

Great revolutions often start with a question. This was also the case in the world of sails, when in the 1980s a “certain” Peter Conrad ( president of the American company Sobstad) wondered: “‘Why is it that to make a sail we have to buy fabric and cut it in a thousand ways to orient it well when we could make the fabric already oriented, building a fabric that is already the sail, eliminating problematic seams because of their elasticity’.” From this insight in 1986, the Genesis patent was born at Sobstad, which would revolutionize the sailmaking world by allowing sails to be built with fibers oriented along the direction of the stresses, with no more seams. In the early 1980s, the Velman company, a sailmaker founded by Alberto Manfredini in 1979, became the licensee of the American Sobstad brand and became the point of reference for Europe for Sobstad USA. So it has been 30 years that the Italian Velman sailmaker has also been doing, every day, with the production of fiber-oriented sails. A decades of experience that no one else can boast in this field, as Alberto Manfredini himself told us in an interview.

THE WORD FROM ALBERTO MANFREDINI
Can we say that Velman is the sailmaker with the most experience in the world of fiber oriented sails?
I would say so! Until 2006 we were the only producers of fiber-oriented membranes in Europe, and we supplied almost all sailmakers. After 2006, when the U.S. Genesis patent expired, other sailmakers, in order to be autonomous, began experimenting with this processing. For this reason, to date we have at least 20 years more experience than others. Concrete proof of how much we trust our experience is that we give an eight-year warranty on sail delamination because we are the only ones who have had the time to test the actual durability. A time during which we have continued to invest in research and technology development.

Each sailmaker has its own name for defining fiber-oriented sails, even though we are talking about very similar products. What is your trump card compared to others?
When a customer brings back a glider that is still in good condition after 15 years and continues to ask for a similar product, I believe there is no need to have any last-minute tricks up their sleeve or patents. Our technology is the only one that can produce sails with oriented wires with a pressure of 180 tons per square meter (18 kg per square centimeter). No other manufacturers give such pressures to their fabrics. Sailmakers working only with vacuum have a major limitation, because any pump capable of generating vacuum cannot squeeze the fabric for more than 1 kg per square cm.

Why is pressure so important?
The large squeezing pressure allows the use of only functional glue to join the various layers of the fabric with a significant reduction in weight that decreases heeling and an increase in the softness of the fabric that prevents the formation of living creases that can cut the fabric over time.

Today there is a lot of talk about continuous fiber and one-piece sailing. Why are you opposed to this philosophy?
Certainly a one-piece sail can entice customers who mistakenly associate continuous fiber with greater strength than a module sail. In fact, all these sails, which by construction cannot have high pressures, have major limitations in terms of weight, shape, but most importantly, durability. Which is not the case in module sails, where the bonding between panels is even stronger than the rest of the structure.

What sail would you recommend to a cruising-loving sailor today?
Undoubtedly I will recommend to him the product that provides the best performance in terms of durability. Our Carbon Double Platinum for example is a sail characterized by two outer taffetas enclosing a carbon fiber structure that dispels any belief about the extreme fragility of this material, which is a victim of its own weakness when impregnated with glue, but if little is used it really has almost no elasticity, excellent light and weather resistance, and ensures a lightweight product that will make the boat heel less, making cruising decidedly more enjoyable.