Written by Ansleigh Coplin: Bosun’s Mate
At the Bosun School we endeavor to not only get across hard and soft skills but also to expose our students to as wide range of mariner enterprises as we can. To end they have had tours of the big beautiful schooner Blunose II, sailed in the Eastern Star and Eastern Points, been through the wonderful Fisheries Museum of the Atlantic, and so on. Last week we all went out to Michele Steven’s Sailloft on 2nd Peninsula to see how a proper sail loft works. And we even saw how a new sail gets laid out.
Michele Steven’s SailLoft sits atop a sunny, grassy corner of Second Peninsula, overlooking the bay. We’re about a month and a half into bosun school now, and this week our students paid a visit to the loft to see what a day in the life of a working sailmaker entails. Michele marks the fourth generation of sailmakers in the Stevens family, but she’s the first woman to run the show. Family pictures dating back to the 1920s decorate the walls around the trap door entrance, where we’ve lined up our shoes.
Michelle has laid out a series of sails in various stages of completion, to highlight each step of her work. A tan bark gaff rigged main is traced out on the floor of the loft with string and nails, a method that her father taught her, and her grandfather before him used, as evidenced by the thousands of pinprick holes in the sail loft floor. Our students help Michelle lay out all the different panels of the main sail on top of the template, and she points out her penciled-in seam marks where the sail is to be sewn together. We also learned about the different ways you can cut a sail so that it’s best shaped to catch the wind- which parts need to fly taut, and which sections need a built in belly to them.
We talk about different materials sails are made of, and the benefits of each over the others. Picton Castle‘s first suit of sails were made inside of this loft from natural fibers, such as cotton canvas and flax. The Bluenose II‘s main sail was also made at this loft (in 3 weeks!) out of Dacron, a commonly used modern material that is light but very strong.
This year’s bosun school students left the sail loft with a much more comprehensive understanding of sail making than when they entered, and for that we extend a big thank you to Michele Stevens. Our Captain tells us that we will be reviewing all this soon and will also be getting a primer on sail repair, which most of us will find most useful. Now all that’s left to do is put our learning into action: don our palms and needles and try our own hands at canvas work in the weeks ahead.
