Mountain View Youth Sailor Adrian Maciuca Launches New Product
Adrian Maciuca started sailing, at age 8, with his dad Dragos on Shoreline Lake in Mountain View. Over the years he has added many sailing adventures and accomplishments to his life, including the invention of a new tension gauge, by Tyte Tools. And it’s not actually been that “many” years; he is only 16. This is alongside already being an avid and skilled sailor with sailing as a central life passion.
At age 9, Adrian began taking sailing lessons on the lake. He was instantly hooked. Adrian soon exhausted the camp’s available boats (dinghy, Lasers, and windsurfers) and began teaching sailing at Shoreline, completing the sail-training cycle.
In ninth grade, Adrian joined the high school race team at Peninsula Youth Sailing Foundation (PYSF), run by Molly Vandemoer, and shortly after, he also joined the C420 race team. Concurrently, Adrian has taken and received ASA 101 and ASA 103 certifications, and has audited ASA 104 and ASA 114 while vacationing in Belize on a Leopard 48 catamaran. More recently, Adrian crewed for his father for their first bareboating trip in French Polynesia aboard a Leopard 42.
Back at school, Adrian is sharing his passion for sailing as the founder and president of the growing Mountain View High School Sailing Club. As a result, the school now has an FJ high school racing team at PYSF.
His racing activities inspired Adrian to design and build a new shroud-tension gauge, which he is looking to start producing in volume. It’s an affordable, easy-to-use device used primarily for C420s, but also boats such as 470s, J/22s, J/24s, and other dinghy and small-keelboat classes. With some adult supervision from his parents, Adrian has turned the product into a company, Tyte Tools, and has launched an Indiegogo campaign to help get the tensioner into production.
If you start kids sailing, you don’t know where they’ll go, but it is often a place where dreams are made. There are endless youth programs around the Bay for all types of kids. Adrian Maciuca has clearly jumped in with both feet, becoming a sailor, racer, cruiser and inventor, all since starting sailing just eight years ago.