People behind Zoom Sails
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Founder/Director Phil Auger is a professional sail maker. Born and raised in the South Island of New Zealand he worked part time at the local sail loft while studying business and IT. Part time turned into a full time job at the North Sails affiliated loft known as Southern Sails. After three years Phil started work for East Coast windsurf, working with windsurf sails and the early generation surf kites, while also servicing yacht sails at the in house sail loft.
Phil then moved into his own purpose built small production sail loft where he stayed for 10 years, making 100-150 sails per year and actively racing one to four days a week. Phil loves nothing more than making boats go fast and spent time racing dinghys, sportboats, small multihulls and one design keelboats. His first boat was a Hobie 14 at age 15, moving to a Paper Tiger Catamaran, then a International Moth and to a Shaw 6.5 high performance sportboat. The last seven years he has owned a Davidson 35 production cruiser/racer. 2012-16 he spent cruising the South Pacific, North Pacific and then SE Asia with his wife Astrid where they are currently based. This time spent long distance cruising gave a much better knowledge of the requirements for a good cruising sail from a racing background. |
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Roaming Representative and Designer Jamie Gilford started sailmaking in 1985 at Halsey Sailmakers, one of the top lofts in USA at the time. In 1988 he became upwind sail designer and stayed in this position until 1994, after which he did consulting work for a number of lofts in the US.
Jamie worked with many high profile racing campaigns, including America 3 (Americas Cup), Matador 1&2 (Maxi), Rothmans, Fortuna, Dolphin and Youth (Whitbread). Since 2008 Jame has been cruising the world with his family on board SV Totem - their Stevens 47. They have completed a circumnavigation and logged over 50,000 miles. |
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