Arisa Moriya’s route into the DMG MORI Sailing Team shows how communication, trust and practical clothing choices combine during demanding offshore sailing.
Helly Hansen’s latest sailing profile follows Arisa Moriya, the newest member of the DMG MORI Sailing Team, and uses her story to explore what keeps a multilingual offshore crew functioning when fatigue builds. Moriya began sailing at university in Japan, later moved to Sydney, worked at North Sails and spent time with Comanche before joining the IMOCA team.
The story is relevant to LBG readers because the practical demands of offshore clothing begin with the same fundamentals that matter on much smaller boats. Staying dry, managing moisture and avoiding large swings in body temperature can affect concentration long before clothing becomes a question of fashion.
Communication is a performance tool
DMG MORI Sailing Team works across Japanese, English and French, so crew members have to communicate clearly even when the boat is noisy and people are tired. Moriya describes trust as something built through repeated work together rather than something that appears automatically because talented sailors share a boat.
That lesson scales down well to family and club sailing. Clear instructions, agreed routines and confidence in the person beside you can make a short coastal passage calmer and safer, particularly when conditions deteriorate or a manoeuvre needs to happen quickly.
Clothing helps protect concentration
Moriya talks about the importance of staying dry and keeping temperature stable through long watches. Technical layers cannot remove fatigue, but clothing that manages moisture and weather can reduce one source of discomfort while the sailor concentrates on the boat and the team.
Small-boat users face a shorter version of the same problem because spray, wind and inactivity can chill someone surprisingly quickly. Choosing layers around the actual activity is therefore more useful than buying clothing simply because it carries an offshore label.
A broader route into sailing
Moriya did not grow up following a conventional professional-sailing pathway and instead built experience through university sailing, sailmaking and international teams. Helly Hansen says she believes she could become the first Asian woman to compete in The Ocean Race, giving her story a wider significance around representation and progression.
For LBG Lifestyle, the most useful part of the profile is the connection between equipment and people. Good clothing supports performance, but teamwork, curiosity and repeated time on the water are what turn technical gear into something genuinely useful.
Source
Helly Hansen