SAILMAKING SAFARI DAY 2
Wake up, shake off some jet lag, drink some coffee, jump in the car (passengers in the left side here) and head down near the coastline to start the first day of working at Ullman Sails South Africa (US RSA). Loft co-owner and my host, Belinda, drove me from their hillside house overlooking Cape Town down to the loft. As I took in the local sites of people, cars and the morning getting busy while we drove down a long straight rode with buildings on the right and the grave yard on the left Belinda said, "on the right in the yellow building is the canvas shop and right behind it is the handwork shop. Then, this next building is where the laminating is set up and the next long building with the cars parked in front of it is the office and main loft." We pulled up to the edge of the long building and entered the gated front doors to the main office and operation center for US RSA.
Once in the door and checking things out I quickly met some of the front office team and other key people. In the first 10 minutes I had met 10 key people and the tour of each department was just starting. 40 minutes later and another 10+ people I got the quick flyby of the US RSA set up that has 5 buildings, about 100 people, day & night shift.
The impressive part of the flyby tour is everyone in every shop was busy and you could tell there was a flow to how the loft works. I wanted to stop and ask all my questions about their sailmaking compared to the Ullman Sails Newport Beach sailmaking in the first 5 minutes or every time I met a new manager. But I knew that the day and week would allow time for the discovery phase and learning period for me. Time to take notes and not rush a good thing!
US RSA loft does about the same number of sails we do in a month in a couple of days. The big rolls of Dacron above are 600 yards master rolls; we cut on rolls that are about 55-70 yards. A large number of sails done here in South Africa are for the charter boat fleets around the world for large multihulls and monohulls; therefore, there are hundreds and thousands of yards of cloth cut for each of these charter fleets. There are several boat builders here in Cape Town, one that put 3 large catamarans in the water every week. Guess who does all the sails for them???? You guessed it, US RSA!!!!
I spent most of the time today working on a custom 50' catamaran main order for a Long Beach, CA boat. This is usually done with an online form for design specs, finishing and handwork detail, and off it goes into cyber world. The order magically appears on someone's computer at US RSA and our sail gets started. Now I have the luxury of being here with all the players and walking through their process step-by-step. I can ask questions as I fill out the form and get the sail order "hand delivered" to the crew here at US RSA. I spent a lot of time finishing the design and specs to fit seamlessly into the plotting system here and the order form to match what the customer and I need with everything specified to fit right into the US RSA pipeline. So, I had some fun meeting with Charl who runs the laser cutter / plotter, Malcom who works on the big boat floor and handwork , and finally Ryan from the handwork shop showing them all the sail I want to make for the Long Beach customer. They all had valuable input on what was good and needed info to get the sail right.
By the end of the day and tagging along with several of the people here at US RSA, I saw the professional and no-nonsense approach to sailmaking here. Every step and motion has purpose, they have a lot of sails to do and the more organized it is with design, order sheet, handwork requirements, the faster and better the sails come out. I got the 50' catamaran sail detailed and ordered to get in the pipeline hopefully by the end of this week. What a difference seeing and experiencing this type of operation this sail loft is!
Tomorrow I will spend some time with the lamination department who are the US RSA team that makes all the FiberPath product. That will be exciting!
Tomorrow I will spend some time with the lamination department who are the US RSA team that makes all the FiberPath product. That will be exciting!
