When Lars Bo Poulsen, Chief Designer and the Ullman Sails Denmark team built a new set of sails for Jan Andersen's Black Marlin in the spring of 2022, they were built to race.

And race they did.

The 33-foot carbon trimaran competed in Denmark, including the Silverrudder, before Jan and his wife pointed ​​​​​​​Black Marlin towards something considerably further away.

New Zealand.

They sailed from Denmark to New Zealand and eventually all the way back again, returning in the spring of 2026.

The sails came home with them.

BACK TO THE START LINE

After thousands of cruising miles, the same set of sails built in 2022 was back on the racecourse for the 2026 Silverrudder, the solo race around the Danish island of Fyn.

Conditions weren't exactly gentle. Rain and strong winds made for a quick lap, with gusts approaching 30 knots.

Jan and Black Marlin completed the course in:

14:07:21

It was Jan's fastest Silverrudder lap yet, improving on his previous best from 2021 by one minute and 32 seconds.

And the sails powering Black Marlin around Fyn were the same ones that had left the Ullman loft four years earlier.

They'd raced in Denmark, cruised to New Zealand and back, and then gone racing again.

Sometimes the story of a sail isn't just what happens on race day.

It's everything that happened before it.