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Kame and Monty together made some of the earliest Mylar windsurfing sails. Later Monty joined Barbara Ockel at the Pacific Surf Sails loft in Berkeley where custom sails were made for Pete Cabrinha and Robbie Naish. In 1981 Monty toured with the U.S. Olympic Team in the Finn, and in 1982 left the team for windsurfing, to work with Horizon Sails, the importer of Gaastra in the USA... Blows Against the Empire Bob Barton, the director of Horizon, was facinated by the growing windsurfing market. He planned to find an alternative to Hoyle Schweitzer's patent. Schweitzer asked a substantial fee issuing licences. Barton believed that he could find an alternative and ask a lower fee. Consequently, Monty worked with three different inventors; Michael Ready (a rig with a spar along the foot), Stuart Jamison (a single boom which rotated between upper and lower sails), and Newman Darby. Newman Darby was in the middle of a patent controversy. He had published plans for his individual free sail rig design in Popular Mechanics magazine in the late sixties. Monty worked with Darby in 1982, making sails for the fantastic rigs which Darby designed. Yet the beauty of windsurfing is in its simplicity and the various alternatives to the Schweitzer rig suffered from their complication. Monty left Horizon in late 1982... Hong Kong - A Quiver for Winner Monty then worked for Platt Jonson at Island Windsurfing in Newport, R.I. The photo above is from the southern Chesapeake, a Island Windsurfing custom board (Andy Pimental), a Spindler designed and built Island Windsurfing mylar battenless pinhead, 1983. Ken Winner, Neil Pryde's premier World Cup racer was racing with sails designed and built by Spindler at Island Windsurfing. Mr Neil Pryde arrived in Annapolis to offer Monty a position at Neil Pryde Sails. Monty moved to Hong Kong in the end of 1983 joining Blaauw and Spanier at Pryde as a staff designer.
Reefing Sails and Wing Masts Winner also had Monty make early reefing sails for crossing ventures. The fruit of this work was later taken to extremes by Arnaud deRosnay in his infamous channel crossings. Monty also built early wing mast sails at the Maui Sails Loft. Monty was an extremely productive designer for Pryde. He was doing the bulk of the OEM work for board manufacturers (Sailboard, Hifly, Tiga, Windsurfer, Alpha, Sport Bittl, Windsurfing Japan, among others). He also designed some of the Neil Pryde collection sails (Nova, Ultranova, RAF Slalom). A Time of Transition 1985 was a transition year. Leaving Pryde, Monty entered into negotiations with F2, Gaastra and North. He decided after considering the offers to go ahead with his own business. But there was one last meeting in Hong Kong with Eckart Wagner (North) and Udo Schutz (Fanatic). This meeting ended in an agreement to work together... The Cut-Away At the end of 1985 Monty produced prototypes for North Sails. These protos included the controversial "cut away". The protos were made at the Garda North loft and were tested with positive results by Helgo Lass and Cesare Cantigalli. Monty's design position at North lasted for only some weeks as the situation was complicated by the difficulties North windsurfing was experiencing at that time. At this moment Mr Schutz moved. Schutz bought what was the North/DeVries sailloft in Hong Kong and offered to Monty a position as his designer, and so began A.R.T... Advanced Rig Technology
The ART RadWing was the design which set the windsurfing market abuzz. The RadWing was a winner in magazine tests, and powered Monty to take the Johnnie Walker Trophy at Weymouth in 1987. The RadWing may have been the first production windsurfing sail which had a free upper leech as its primary design feature. Free upper leeches are now the norm for performance windsurfing sails. The RadWing model was in production for five years, more than 25,000 were sold worldwide. Spindler Design
Spindler Design prospered on Lake Garda for eight years, then was sold to the Fanatic group, the loft then moved to La Seyne, France. After only a year in France, ART R&D moved to Tarifa. Collaborators Over the years Monty has created many successful designs, working with many leading windsurfers... Ken Winner, Mike Waltze, Matt Schweitzer, Alex Aguera, Fred Haywood,
Klaus Simmer, JP Siret, Arnaud and Jenna deRosnay, Dave Perks, Stan
Sobczyk, Bruno Pouget, Stefano Pavcovich, Johan Krauth, Sylvie Renart, Cesare
Cantigalli, Maui Meyer, Klaus Baumann, Ronny Kiaulehn, Fabian Pendle,
Nathalie Siebel, Marcus Steinlien, Thorkil Kristensen, Eric Thieme,
Nathalie LeLievre, Christoph Prin-Guenon, Guy Cribb, Nik Baker,
Eduardo Bellini, Paco Manchon, Fernando Martinez and most recently Luke Siver
have collaborated with Monty in windsurfing sail design generation.
F A S T Spindler the competitor was fourth on the RYA's World Sailing Speed list after Weymouth in 1985 with his series RAF Slalom. Test Results on Previous Spindler Design Sails
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