A racing start

It all began back on 14th November 1971 with a tiny Loft on the first floor accessed by a spiral staircase at the back of the oldest grain warehouse on Poole Quay, sanding and varnishing a rickety old wooden floor and cleaning and painting ancient oak beams, still with some of their deck camber on the underside, which supported the floor above and at some time in the past had obviously been salvaged from a ship; with a good handful of orders for the popular classes of the day. With Soling keelboat sails going to the 1972 Munich Olympics, Fireball sails for the then current World Champion John Caig and National titles in the 420 and YWDB classes. One of our earliest yacht customers was H J Bolson, owner of our local shipbuilders, who was at the time busy improving the performance of his West Solent One Design “Sapphire” . This was a very useful relationship as the shipyard had a large lofting floor which was handy for working on “Sapphire’s” sails .