We are thrilled to announce a partnership with Wates Construction at their Maritime Centre of Excellence site, Boldrewood Campus that sees a dedicated sail collection point at the site.

It is fitting they are building a Maritime Center of Excellence and we hope the sail collection will continue when development has finished.

I have been to the site and I must say what a great site it is.  I am looking forward to seeing the finished project and also collecting some sails along the way.

So…. if you are in Southampton and don’t want to dump your sails into landfill, please head over to the Boldrewood site and look for the Sail Drop Off Point.   See the map below.  They will even pick them up if possible !!

Our good friends Rapanui have recently been discussing the circular economy with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation which got us thinking about our sail recycling programme.

Regular readers will know our ambitions to be able to shred unusable sails and sell this back to manufacturing, but why not push that even further and say that a sail could be wholly reused without the need to produce new material ever again.   A tall order?  I read recently from another entrepreneur that ‘great athletes set impossible goals and achieve so much by getting half way there…’  (Gil Penchina in Wired).  Well, for one I don’t think it is impossible, but yes it is a big challenge and I am due to speak to the Foundation about how we can make this happen.

We have touched upon the cradle to cradle approach for sail manufacturing before and at the recycling end we believe we can shred sails and sailcloth to a material that is acceptable for use back into manufacturing.  The challenge is making sails from material that can be wholly recycled back into the making of a new sail.

The Island is alive with such forward thinking and we hope to play our part by being the first sail recyclers on the planet!

A thought occurred to us whilst making bunting the other day.  What do we do with the Clew’s and Head of the spinnaker?  From a sailmaker’s perspective, this is where all the strength of the sail is concentrated.  Thus, the sail is thicker in the corners and has a fixing point (normally a ring).   The light-bulb moment…. ping ….. why not cut out the two clews and the x metres of surrounding strengthened spinnaker, sew them together and what you have is the basis of a hammock!   As the clews are identical in size and shape, the hammock should be balanced.

Anyway, phase one of development proved to be most successful. It usually takes us at least four attempts to get to this stage.   Phase two coming up.

It was recently reported on the BBC that London boroughs will get a windfall of £50,000 each to spend on dressing their streets with flags and bunting for the Olympics 2012.

Some people have perhaps understandably questioned the use of such funds and the eco/environment argument has been put forward.   One commentator has stated ‘…it is waste of money, especially as the flags and bunting will be thrown away afterwards…’

It doesn’t have to be as we can provide bunting made from recycled sails, namely old spinnaker sails that would otherwise end up in landfill.  Indeed, we can hire bunting to local boroughs so it need not be an entire waste.

This would fit well with Boris Johnson’s plans for an ‘eco-makeover’ for London.  He promised hundreds of green projects for 2012.   So here is one that ticks most of the boxes Boris !!

I just wanted to say a big thank you to the guys and girls at Kemp Sails who have just donated some of their old sails.

I drove down white van man style and was met by Toby and Rob who helped weak little me load some monster sails into the van.  As we struggled to push one into the back of a van a very kind lady rushed out and showed us how to ‘man’handle a sail.  You should have seen the fun getting them out however.  I now have a sail from a 90ft boat to move into our sail storage area (aka Shed).    Anyway, these guys were great and looking at their operation they were running a very good ship (excuse the pun).

Thanks once again guys.

More experimenting and I must say I like these.  I showed them to the very nice lady from the Isle of Wight Chamber of Commerce and she wanted one.   Still working on designs, but edging closer to a range of bags and windbreaks, but if you are reading and have a design in mind, we can make it.  In fact, we can make anything  ’A royal we’ !!

Sails have started to roll in from only a couple of locally placed adverts – people love the idea and I have been to see many people to hear the story of their sails.  They all have a story which makes each product derived from these sails even more unique. continue reading…

Our first blog post (albeit written a little while ago).

The wightsails plan is simple enough, a couple of people who like sails and sailing, care about the environment and are entrepreneurs put these skills together and decided to recycle sails into new products.    Yep, starting another new business and the roller coaster ride of emotions starts again.  We have a number of businesses and I think I am addicted to launching new companies, it is a the fun bit after all. continue reading…