North Navigator Pro

It’s safe to say that when Hugh Pinfold, North’s Director of Design and Engineering, sets himself a design challenge – he goes deep. The original Navigator bar was a benchmark of clean functionality back when North launched it in its current guise, and bar (excuse the terrible pun) a few subtle running changes along the way, has remained a solid and well-proven system in terms of safety and impressive long-term wear characteristics. The Navigator Pro has been three years in the making, with Hugh’s brief to design the most reliable auto unwinding front-line system and improve strength and safety.

The most obvious change at first glance is the two PU covered lines running through the bar aperture. One has a slightly larger diameter than the other and this stealthily houses the safety line which flags to a single front line with a neat splice protected by a red plastic stopper. When the safety is activated, this is pleasingly friction free to pull through and disables the kite effectively. Even when full trim is pulled on the cleat, a bungee hidden inside the Dyneema keeps any slack in the system tucked neatly out the way, completely avoiding any dangling lines. An extremely neat swivel on the safety line attachment avoids any potential twisting here and indexes itself perfectly centered in the chicken loop. In practice, even with a decent level of sand applied to the system to stress test, the auto front-line swivel works flawlessly, without having to bring the grip low. You don’t even have to think about it.

The trim line has a foam-covered loop to enable extremely easy depowering and is soft, light and tactile to handle. The trim cleat works well with another bungee run up the Dyneema to avoid any dangly bits above the bar. Color coding is comprehensively placed on the leaders, pigtails, floats, toggles, flag-out line and the bar grip itself, as with a self-untwisting system it’s important to rig correctly to avoid any port/starboard confusion or twists. The lines themselves are an uprated SK99 Dyneema providing an ultra-direct feel to the kite. The splices to adjust line length are elegant and minimal with little chance of catching anything on.

The grip has a contour along the upper rear side which lets you know intuitively if you have the bar the correct way round. This fits perfectly into the bend of your fingers. The stitching is all hidden internally to minimize wear and maximize comfort. The floats are a sensible size and integrate into the bar ends which provide an excellent degree of bump protection. An insert pops out of the bottom of the bar to adjust your bar width from 45-50cm or 50-55cm depending on the version.

If you ride unhooked, when the grip butts up against the top of the chicken loop assembly, a neat indent in the top of the molding coupled with the two PU lines indexes the loop assembly perfectly towards you. The QR has had a serious makeover and sports a ceramic bearing to keep things freely rotating. The interchangeable seatbelt style harness loops carry over from the previous system in various sizes with the ingenious push, twist and lock toolless install. The bar aperture and other small parts that would normally be bare stainless steel have a special titanium PVD coating which makes them extra wear resistant and also give the bar a feeling of overarching quality.

The Navigator Pro comes bundled with an ISO-certified short leash. This in itself has a rubberized quick release which is easy to grip with wet hands, and is built from a sturdy elasticated webbing with a neoprene-covered sprung hook attachment for the safety, keeping things clean.

Far more than adding an auto swivel to the existing Navigator, the Pro system is more or less a complete redesign. Potentially one of the cleanest and most effective swiveling bar systems on the market, the Navigator Pro is a tour de force of Hugh Pinfold’s design ability and is a benchmark in how far bar design has come even in the last five years. It blends intricate design detail with simplicity exactly where each method is required. The devil, as they say, is in the detail, and there’s spades of it in this ISO-certified system.