Since Day One the Batt Sails loft has been renowned for innovative, winning design, including truly fantastic spinnakers and other downwind sails. This is no surprise as Dick Batt’s formative years as a sail designer included running the spinnaker departments for major lofts in the UK and New Zealand.
Dick Batt was recruited into the world of sail design direct from University. At that time Bruce Banks Sails was the only sail loft on the planet employing computers for sail design and production. They were years ahead of the opposition.
Emigrating to Auckland, Dick was instrumental in the conception of the ‘SailMaker’ computer sail design project. He returned to the UK to establish his own sail making company in 1980.
Batt Sails was among the first European sail makers to embrace the revolutionary 3d CAD system, investing in new levels of precision, efficiency and design integrity. This was the first wave of a design and production revolution that has since swept through the sail manufacturing.
A remarkable fact: Dick Batt has been designing and making sails with digital systems for over 50 years, longer than any other person alive today.
All our sail making is kept in-house for the closest control of quality and consistency.
For over 30 years the ground-breaking ‘SailMaker’ suite of programs has underpinned our advanced CAD capability.The powerful ‘SmarAzur Project’ software now enhances our already comprehensive arsenal of sail design tools .
SmarAzur sets new standards of accuracy in production and allows sophisticated aero-analysis of sail shapes and interactions.