Performance Sailcraft's 29er is aimed at young sailors who like speed and excitement. "The kids don't like to slug along,'' Peter Bjorn says.

Peter Bjorn and Ian Bruce stand in front of completed boats that are ready to ship out.

The 29er is described in company literature as a boat that is to sailing what snowboarding was to skiing.

They're both into their 60s, but the old Olympic team is still together and still racing.

Ian Bruce and Peter Bjorn sailed together in the 1972 Munich Olympics and then went on to make a name for themselves in business by building and selling the world famous Laser sailboat.

The financially distressed Laser was sold to a U.S. company in the late 1980s but Bruce and Bjorn weren't out of the sailboat business for long.

They made a comeback with a boat called the Byte and now they're hurrying to build their company, Performance Sailcraft, into an international force.

"It's like Phoenix rising from the ashes," said Bruce, 67, who has built boats in 10 different international classes over his career. "We're back in it - the same two people."

Performance Sailcraft now builds and markets three sailboat models - the Byte, the Megabyte and the 29er - from a tiny cluttered shop in LaSalle that feels like someone's garage but is really the converted coalroom of a disused heating plant.

The unglamourous production facility hasn't hurt sales. Revenues tripled over the last two years to $1.5 million this year, and are estimated to hit $2.3 million next year with 70 per cent of orders coming from the U.S.

The future looks bright but Bruce and Bjorn have been careful to keep overhead low and sought out professional management.

They've recruited a former Canadian Pacific senior executive as the company's chairman and hired a plant manager to oversee production.

With a recent injection of capital by an unnamed shareholder, Performance is moving next door to a space with three times the floor area and is putting four salespeople on the road in the U.S. to visit yacht clubs, sailing schools and dealerships.

"We're at the break point," Bruce said. "We're in the process of turning the company from an entrepreneurship into a major force in the North American market. ... We've been there before with the Laser." But making and selling sailboats is only one part of Performance Sailcraft's business.

The company also administers international associations for the Byte and 29er classes. That involves maintaining a huge owner database and organizing area championships, world championships, teaching clinics and regattas in each class.

It's a mammoth job but a key part of developing a market for the sailboats the company produces.

"There are 100,000 people going to the Olympics in their minds and we're putting them on the road," said Bjorn, 61.

Members of Bjorn's athletic family take care of the class-association part of the business. Tyler, an international sailing coach and sailor, Kirsten, a sports psychologist and former tennis pro, and wife Janet, a former national ski team member and elite sailor, are all involved in the company.

Another member of the Bjorn clan is realizing the Olympic dream at the Sydney Olympics. Kai, a 6-foot-5 former CFL offensive lineman, is competing in the Star Class, the same class that Bruce and Bjorn competed in in 1972. When Kai isn't training, he's the director of corporate relations at Performance Sailcraft.

The genesis of the company dates to 1989 when Bruce designed the Byte, a single-sail, 12-foot dinghy that's a step below the Laser in terms of weight and performance. It's aimed at teenagers weighing 100 to 145 pounds who are past the learning stage of sailing.

The Laser, a lightweight, high-performance dinghy, became a huge hit among both recreational and competitive sailors after its launch in 1971. But the company ran into financial heavy seas in the 80s and was eventually sold by the bank to U.S. giant Vanguard Sailboats in 1987. More than 170,000 Lasers have been built.

At first, the Byte was manufactured by Mirage Yachts, but when that company was purchased, Bruce, Bjorn and another partner, Morley Smith, president of fibreglass fabricator GSM Production Inc., bought rights to manufacture the boat.

The partners slowly developed the market for the boat, working on the company only part-time while holding down other jobs.

In the mid-1990s, the Canadian Yachting Association made the single-sail Byte class a fully recognized part of Canada's youth training program and included an open event as an official part of the Youth Championship. Then in 1998, the boat became internationally recognized, and this year it was selected for the female single-handed competition at the World Youth Championships.

More than 2,200 Bytes have been sold over the last eight years.

Emboldened by the success of the Byte, Performance launched a second design last year, the 14-ft, 5-inch 29er. Designed by Australian Julian Bethwaite, it was launched simultaneously in Canada and four other countries and is aimed at a youth market hungry for speed. "The kids don't want to slug along," Bjorn said. "They want adrenaline and speed. They want to go shredding."

This year, the company introduced a larger version of the Byte, the Megabyte. At 14-ft., 3-inches, the Megabyte is designed for one person weighing over 200 pounds, for couples or for a parent teaching a child. The company plans to launch a fourth boat next summer.

Performance contracts out the manufacturing of their boats' fibreglass shells to GSM and another local company, Atlantix Marine Innovations.

Once the shells are delivered to the Lasalle plant, workers add the fittings, including aluminum centreboards, rudders and masts.

Peter Burnham, editor of Sailing World magazine, said Performance has a strong line of boats but cautioned it's up against tough U.S. competition.

"It's a much smaller company than a couple of the U.S. builders, and with limited marketing and other resources, the company has to be pretty entrepreneurial," said Burnham, whose magazine picked the 29er as boat of the year in 1999 and the Megabyte as top-performance dinghy this year. "Given the strength of their boat line, they've definitely got potential. But growing a small company's no easy task."