Lowell North

Lowell North (1929 to 2019) was an American competitive sailor and sailmaker who joined racing success to an engineer's approach to design. Born in Springfield, Missouri, and raised in Southern California, he learned to sail at Newport Beach and San Diego and began cutting sails as a teenager, recutting the mainsail of the Star class boat he raced with his father. At fifteen he crewed for Malin Burnham in the 1945 Star World Championship, which they won, and he went on to win more Star Worlds. He took bronze in the Dragon class at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and gold in the Star class with Peter Barrett aboard North Star at the 1968 Games in Mexico City. A civil engineer by training, he founded North Sails in 1957 and used computer modeling and new materials in sail making. He also skippered the twelve metre yacht Enterprise in the 1977 America's Cup defender series and entered the National Sailing Hall of Fame in 2011.