Just five days before the Round the Island Race, one of the largest yacht races in the world, it’s all go at the T Sails loft in Southampton with sailmaker Tim Scarisbrick being inundated with sail repairs.
There’s a torn spinnaker on the shelf waiting to be fixed, and laid out on the floor is a triangle of charcoal-grey cloth that will be Maximus’s brand new genoa. It’s hot in the workshop but a breeze flows through the open plan room, and the many windows provide plenty of natural light for the three sewing machines, each inlaid into a table.
The bigger a sailmaker’s loft, the larger square footage of sail they can make, as every sail has to be laid out flat. Much as Tim would like to move the pillars in his workshop, he doubts that would go down well with the landlord.
“The future plan is to have a bigger place with a floor all the
