Dedicated to Excellence, Dedicated to UK Sailmakers

Excellence. This is the foundation of the lives of Bev and Ron Coalson of San Diego, California. A former Navy Fighter Pilot, today Ron continues to seek excellence in a career as an airline pilot for Federal Express. “I also seek excellence it in my personal life and certainly in performance sailing,” says Ron. “My wife and I came to this sport "late in life," just a short ten years ago, but fell in love with it from our first race. After experiencing some rather serious "screaming" on board one of the early boats we crewed on, we decided the only way to do this was to own our own boat. So, we purchased our Beneteau First 42 10 years ago, French Bred, and have raced her on average 60 to 70 events each year.” When asked about cruising, Ron responds, “cruising is perhaps in our future, but for now, we both love to race around the buoys. Some of the distance stuff is fun, but our hearts lie in windward/leeward.”

In fact, Ron and Bev have just bought a second boat, a one design. Ron explains, “Our Beneteau is the only sailboat we've ever owned until recently, when we purchased a ID35. We were looking for more challenge and knew we had to get into one design racing if we were ever going to learn how to really make a boat perform. The Beneteau has been an awesome boat and still is, but it is a combination boat and does a lot of things well, but it simply was not built just to race around the buoys. The ID35, on the other hand, will only do one thing, and that is going around the buoys.... really fast! We've learned to expect no more than a boat was built for and have learned that no boat will do everything, so the move to the race boat was a logical step in our desire to learn more.”

Getting the best sails for your boat is key in winning races and is a passionate topic for Ron. He explains, “We knew basically nothing about sailing, other than some aerodynamic theory from all my years in aviation. Choosing a sail maker was, therefore, quite a process for us. Everyone has an opinion and we tried to hear the ones from the people we met and respected. Slowly, we began to form our own. Our needs were simply to get the fastest, longest lasting sails our budget could afford. In our choice of UK, every expectation has been both met and exceeded!”

Now ten years later, Ron and Bev look back, “We typically get two years out of a UK light number one, one to one and a half years from a UK .5 or .6oz spinnaker, depending on how much we abuse it and four years from our UK mains. I think we could probably have gotten five years from the last main, had we not been a little over zealous with the outhaul! These are all top of the line, Tape Drive Race Sails from UK. We have found them to be fast, very fast, specifically designed to our boat and to our kind of sailing in San Diego's light air conditions. Who could ask for more?”

“John Bennett has provided us with professional and personalized service and has never been too busy to answer a "stupid question" from a club racer. The price is affordable, the longevity is unsurpassed and the sails are fast! What else is there? I would not buy a sail from any other sail maker! We know that when we don't win a race or a regatta, it's certainly not our sails that were at fault! Out light air performance has improved dramatically, and I'm talking about a 25,000 lb. boat, and when the breeze is up, we just change to our UK Tape Drive Heavy One, or if it's really up (for San Diego, that is) then we go to our UK Tape Drive Number Two and we smoke!”

”What UK does for us is answer our needs! We don't have to wait to purchase a sail, we get personalized service, customized design, and very consistent quality, sails that are fast and stay fast. Delivery is timely at an affordable price. We recommend UK Sailmakers to everyone we talk to because we've been so satisfied! Our ID35 came with another sail maker's sails but as they need to be replaced, we will definitely replace them with UK Tape Drive Racing Sails!”

Ron concludes, ”My comments are from the heart, it is exactly how we feel about UK Sailmakers and John Bennett and if you check the race results, you can easily see that UK's Tape Drive Racing Sails have put us in the winner's circle quite a few times!"

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