We have now manufactured more than 30,000 spinnaker sleeves, 12,000 Tackers, 8,000 Topclimbers and 1500 Gale Sails.

The ATN products are distributed around the world. Click here for list.

THE HISTORY OF THE SPINNAKER SLEEVE The first spinnaker catching device was invented in Germany, about 35 years ago. It was known then under the name of the "Blue Max". It was a very simple cloth tube, with a rigid opening in its base and a closed loop line half internal to the tube to control its up and down. Nobody really noticed it then, since sailing and spinnaker flying were not very popular at the time. However, one person recognized the need for such a device. Eric Tabarly, the French single handed ace, asked his trusted sail maker Victor Tonnerre to make him one for the 1976 OSTAR (single handed transatlantic race) to allow him to sail his "Pen Duick 6" (Whitbread 72' ketch). He won the race and, for the general public, the spinnaker sleeve was discovered. Soon after, every sailmaker in France was building their own version. In the US, Brad Mack of then "Mack-Shaw sailmakers" in Fort Lauderdale and "Cruising Systems" of Marblehead, MA with their "Sally", should be credited with the first serious attempt at the modern spinnaker sleeve. The early spinnaker dousing devices were very similar to each other. They were made out of spinnaker or bag cloth which would cling to the spinnaker when wet, the lines (always too small), burned the hands and would foul and wrap around the spinnaker. In short, they were unreliable and unsafe even when handled by experienced crew. ORIGINAL INVENTOR OF THE SPINNAKER SLEEVE FOUND While exhibiting in the Grand Pavois in La Rochelle, France, I had the great pleasure of meeting the original inventor of the spinnaker handling device from which all the spinnaker sleeves, snuffers, socks and chaussettes de spi are derived. Mr. Bengt Ebbeson, from Sweden (now a Floridian like me), who while awaiting delivery of his brand new Amel Super Maramu, was strolling the isles of the Grand Pavois. He saw the small demo ATN sleeve hanging in my booth and proceeded to tell me that he was the holder of the American patent since the 1960s. I was delighted to meet the man and finally hear the real story about it. I knew that Eric Tabarly, the very well known French solo sailor, had noticed it while sailing in the North Sea in 1965, and that he conceived his own in 1968 for the single handed transatlantic Ostar, helping him win it on his 73' ketch "Pen Duick 6". For the French public, Eric Tararly had invented the "chaussette de spi" (spinnaker sock). (Eric Tabarly never claimed this.) I knew this because Eric Tabarly mentions seeing a spinnaker handling device in his book "de Pen Duick a Pen Duick" in a boat show in Hamburg. I remembered a name like "blue Max".  In fact, it was called the Blue Jack: it was a joke, a pun on the very well known Scandinavian condom "Black Jack".  Speaking of this, my ATN spinnaker sleeves are often called spinnaker condoms by lower class sailors (mostly kiwis, aussies, pomies and of course my fellow citizen Americans) Since then, Mr. Bengt Ebbeson went onto much bigger things. He is now the R&D director of Dometic (Sears)..

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