Jesper Vesterstrøm joins NorthSails

Living The Dream – a personal comment by Jesper Vesterstrøm on his change and his wintertraining

It´s what I do and it became my lifestyle and brand of what I make a living of today. I work close with the corporate business world selling my dream, always trying to get new sponsors and media coverage. Modeling I have been doing for 16 years and that keeps me busy traveling when not windsurfing.That´s pretty much my life how it is today. Hard work, lots of travel – but I love my job.

I have been windsurfing for 24 years and this is the first time on NorthSails ever in my Windsurfing Career and I’m very excited to start the season on new Warp F2011.
Top quality, nice design and great performance are some of the things I really like about the NorthSails products. It really looks like that a lot of R&D have been put into the development of all the different pieces. Looking at the performance of the NorthSails in 2010 in both Formula and Slalom I don’t think there was much doubt in how the sails where performing. I was ready for a change and tried the sails and after that I was convinced.

My training for the season is taking place in Australia . I just love it out here. Got the best friends, perfect windsurfing conditions and there is a great night life, too. The Aussies have a great life style, which is not hard to adapt too, it´s simple, fun and filled with a lot of humor and fun with friends. What more do you want!
All my sails, mast, booms etc. was delivered in Australia and I have already been spending a fair amount of time on it. Mainly the formula sails, because that´s mostly what windsurfers are doing in Sydney. 
I am very excited about the performance of the Warp F2011 Formula sails. Personally I think these are the best sails I ever had since NP launched their RS6 many years ago. Rigging the sails is just so easy, no worries about getting cams on, easy downhaul and the back end system on the North booms is actually very smart! No need to untie knots anymore for the outhaul system.
Performance on the water is great. I felt straight away how light the sails where in my hands. The rotation was just so easy and handling in maneuvers is just another dimension compared to what else I am used to (“no more kicking on the cams”). The wind range on the sails is great. The 12 has a huge wind range, in 6-7 knots it goes without any worries and holds easily in up to 16 knots. Great acceleration and top end too. In general the 10, 11 and 12 just work and they are very easy to tune.
Design and Colours: First look I found them super cool – after spending more time on them and doing a bit of TV and photoshoots for promotion I realized how nice they stand out compared to a simple monofilm sail. Really think it´s something all sail makers in windsurfing should do. Get rid of monofilm and make the sails visible! The amount of feedback from random people on the beach who come up and say “wow, actually nice to be able to see whats going on out there” is quite amazing actually. It makes you think if it should not be made as a rule so people can see it from the beach. A NorthSails or Point 7 next to a monofilm sail – well, take a look!

A few weekends ago we had Heat 5 of the Sydney Race series. There where about 40 sailors turning up for a very unusual weekend – with not much wind. However we got one race on the last day in a very, very light breeze, which were the only conditions I have not yet tried my 12 before. Everyone on NeilPryde looked pretty good in the 6-7 knots of wind, which I think was the max we had. However I still managed to win the race by 1 min and did not stop once. It just kept going and going. Probably the race should have been canceled, however – it didn’t! So I took the 1st place.

Jesper Vesterstrøm