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The Loft 2003 |
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Monty's Windsurfing Life Story... "old news"...
 Early Days
Monty Spindler began is career on the water at six years of age, racing an Optimist in Michigan, USA. His racing continued in Minnesota with the "Y" class sixteen foot sloop. In 1970. Monty raced in the junior program at the Annapolis Yacht Club with Scott Steele (Olympic Silver Medal LA games 1984).
Monty went on to race Lasers, winning the Chesapeake Singlehanded Championships in 1974, '75, '76, and '77. In 1977 Monty was placed sixth in the Laser World's in Cabo Frio, Brasil. Monty owned an International 14, Snipe and Finn, and also crewed for acomplished helmsmen in the 14, Soling, Star, Tornado, J24 and various larger keelboat classes.
All-American Sailor
In 1979 Monty and Scott were again teammates competing on the University circuit for St. Mary's College, Maryland. The highlight was a win at the Timme Angsten in Chicago in the fall inter-collegiate championships.
Both Scott and Monty were selected to the President's All-American Sailing Team in 1979, St. Mary's first All-Americans. This began a tradition at St Marys which has consiantly been in the top few colleges in the USA for inter-collegiate sailing. and has more than 20 All-American sailors to its credit since '79.
In 1981 Monty was selected as a member of the US Olympic Team to tour important American and European races. Solid finishes in the Finn (2nd in the N.A.'s and the USA Mid-Winter Champs) did not sway him... he had discovered windsurfing...
Windsurfing with Winner
Ken Winner and Monty met while racing on the University circuit. Ken sold his first windsurfer to Monty, which promptly broke in two! Ken's animation motivated Monty to explore windsurfing.
Monty's facination with free sail rigs began in 1976. While studying and making yacht sails, Monty began making windsurfing sails in the basement of Ron Steele's home. The first sails were versions of the original Windsurfer sail. Monty and Ron experimented...
 Mylar on San Francisco Bay
In 1980 Monty arrived to the San Francisco Bay and worked for a few different yacht sail lofts. His mentor in sail design was Kame Richards of the Richards and VanHeeckeren loft in Alameda.
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.
 Spindler's first project at Pryde was a racing quiver for Ken Winner. The result powered Winner to second overall behind Naish in the World Cups of '84 & '85.
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
A new concept was presented at the first ART product line meeting (Schutz, Pudenz, Richter and Spindler), the "cutaway". The group decided to bring ART to the market with a splash.
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
In 1986 Monty set up his own sail loft on Lake Garda; "Spindler Design". His loft was the R&D center for the ART brand.
Spindler Design prospered on Lake Garda for seven years, then was sold to the Fanatic group. Fanatic then moved its loft from Garda to La Seyne in the south of France. From '89 to '93 ART maintained a winter R&D loft in Tarifa... after only a year in France ART R&D abandoned the La Seyne location and moved to Tarifa full time.
Speed Records
Three consecutive absolute World Sailing Speed Records were set with Spindler designed sails in the early 1990's, first with Pascal Maka and then with Thierry Bielak. In '92-'93 the top 3 positions on the RYA's absolute world speed sailing record list were occupied with Spinder designed windsurfing speed sails.
Birth of The Loft
In '96 Monty left ART, two years later ART closed.
In ´97 Monty rented space in a local Tarifa loft and produced sails for Fernando Martinez and his effort to win the Raceboard World Championships in France ('97). Fernando succeeded and won the World Championship.
In '98 Monty decided to "go for it" and The Loft was born. The Loft was initially located in Casa dePorro at the west end of Tarifa´s beaches. In 2001 The Loft moved into a purpose-built 100m2 building in Betis, on the mountain behind the big dune at Tarifa's west end.
The Loft had its first sails in series in 2000. The American Windsurfer 2000 sail tests on Maui were the first magazine evaluations of sails from The Loft. The O2 and Lip designs were ranked 1&2 in the 2000 AW tests! Randy Johnson (the owner of "The House", a large windsurfing shop in the USA) visited the AW 2000 tests and after windsurfing with the O2 announced "Yes!, I will get on that train!!!", and so The Loft found its first international distributor.
The Loft has grown. The Loft enjoys distribution worldwide and is tested in most major windsurfing magazines.
The Loft is a windsurfer's company. The Loft is dedicated to the development of original quality windsurfing sail designs and we windsurf!
The Loft's top priority is windsurfing performance. The Loft's philosophy is to maximize wind range while minimizing the number of sail lines presented to the market... function over fashion, efficient simplicity.
 Monty has been the mentor for numerous sailmakers and designers, such as Roland Luehrs (Neil Pryde and Gaastra), Jasper Sanders (Neil Pryde and ART), Miro Picorilla (Speed Sails, Rome), Glenn Macilwraithe (Neil Pryde), Gildas Bouchet (Yucca Sails, France), Claudio Zecchini (Seatex Sails, Garda), and Robert Stroj (ART/Pryde).
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, Ludo Jossin, Nev Colton, Fernando Martinez and most recently Luke Siver have collaborated with Monty in windsurfing sail design generation.
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