Helena Schneider is extremely passionate about the environment and cruising. This winter 2019/2020 Helena, onboard her Hallberg Rassy 31 Freedom, will sail solo across the Atlantic. She aims to bring sustainable change to the cruising community and will be promoting ways of minimising our environmental impact as sailors.
On 19th of November Helena tested her sails, and she has send back this nice feedback:
"My new sail wardrobe consisting of an EPEX membrane (vectran-technora fibres) main sail and genoa, and a polyester cloth “Blue Water Runner”- down wind sail has exceeded any expectations I might have had.
Main and genoa
"The proven form stability of this EPEX cruising membrane is a great promise for longevity and continuous quality. Both sails feel exeptionally well built and look the part. Having reduced the genoa size by a little percentage down to 125% meant that I found the sweet spot for effortless cruising for this particular boat- with fantastic helm feedback and a lot more upright, fluent sailing."
The Blue Water Runner
"This downwind sail has, without exaggeration, been an eye opener. Due to cruising by myself I did not want to risk handling a spinnaker pole, so I looked for a safer short handed solution and found this sail. Thinking that this is the safe solution I honestly expected this sail to, yes perform, but no, I didn’t expect it to perform this incredibly well...safe can be boring- not with this sail choice.
Freedom casually hit 6.3knts with the BWR folded in half as a reacher, in combination with the Genoa and main in a breeze of constantly 10-12knts.
Bearing away and having furled away the genoa and split furled the BWR, Freedom felt as if she was on well balanced tracks towards downwind utopia- what a treat!"
Choosing a sailmaker
"In general and from a sustainably point of view, I have chosen Elvstrøm as the sailmaker of my choice due to their incomparably high quality standards. The life cycle I am going to put them through hopefully gives the Danes time to make the sails even more sustainable and incorporate recycled materials meeting the same standards. I also really appreciate the respectful and honest selling approach this company has: if you don’t need new sails- they won’t try and talk you into buying new sails."
"Today I am incredibly happy with my choices along the refit and sustainability line and realising that these sails are perfect and we could have not done any better. So thank you Elvstrøm, today I’m buzzing."
Well, thank you, too, Helena for this wonderful feedback, your spirit and suistanable mind. Fair winds to you from Team Elvstrøm Sails. We look forward to more news updates from you.