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ATN Sailing Equipment and Sailboat Gear
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Hello there! My name is Etienne Giroire. I am a French-born American citizen. I founded ATN inc. in 1985 after 15 years of extensive racing, delivering and skippering maxi boats.

It was then the beginning of the development of large cruising sailing yachts and while the machinery, rigging and furling systems were being designed and went along with the technology available at the time, there was no really efficient spinnaker handling device worth mentioning. I had used every one available in the market at the time, and was disappointed every time. They would get stuck and foul frequently and were very unreliable, even when handled by an experienced crew!


Etienne Giroire of ATN before the start of the 2010 Route du Rhum

I remember checking the spinnaker sleeves of the competitors of the 85/86 BOC (single handed race around the world in 4 legs) in Newport and thinking that the sailmakers could use some help to design and manufacture a good, safe, working spinnaker handling device. That was the beginning of the ATN Spinnaker Sleeve.

It was fairly easy to show the benefits of a reliable spinnaker dousing device to the sailmakers who are primarily interested in designing and building the spinnaker. I soon had 20 sailmakers ordering sleeves from ATN, and every one of them, after switching to the ATN Spinnaker Sleeve, had more orders for spinnakers, because they could then cater to a class of customers, who before wouldn't think of flying the spinnaker without an effective device to control it.

I have stayed in close contact with the offshore racing scene: Whitbread 89-90, Ostar 92,96,2005, and the Route du Rhum 2010.

We have now manufactured more than 30,000 Spinnaker Sleeves, 15,000 Tackers, 10,000 Mastclimbers and 2,000 Gale Sails. We cater to more than 300 sailmakers in the US and abroad.

We work in our 2500 sq. ft. shop in Hollywood, Florida. We look forward to satisfying your needs. Contact ATN for more information.
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