Making Boats Sail in Santa Cruz

Located in one of the old cannery warehouses near , Santa Cruz Sails is a sail-making and repair company that is respected by sailors throughout the Bay Area.

, Chardonnay and are just a few of Santa Cruz Sails' local customers.

"About 90 percent of the sails in Santa Cruz come out of our shop," said David Hodges, owner and operator of Santa Cruz Sails.

Hodges started Santa Cruz Sails in 1992, and has been busy ever since. While other sail makers outsource parts of the job overseas to cut costs, Hodges does as much of the work as possible in-house. He said that’s one of the things that his customers appreciate about the company. It’s hard to be competitive without outsourcing, but making sure the work is done properly is worth the trade-off for Hodges.

"We do very little advertising," he said. "The product sells itself.”

The recession did not set the company back—something Hodges feels was a stroke of luck.

“A job fell into our lap building high definition projection screens for the computer industry a few years ago," said Hodges. "Our sail-making was down thirty percent. That job lasted long enough to get us through the economic slump."

Santa Cruz Sails operates with a relatively small staff.

“We have between four and six employees, and we’ve had as many as eight,” he said. Sail making is a technical trade. Hodges said, “because it’s all custom work, you don’t do the same thing every time. We mostly hire people that have sailed for a long time.”

Hodges has 31 years of experience as a sail maker. Originally, he wanted to get into boat design, but a job offer turned him toward his lifelong trade.

Now, it's something of a family business.

William Hodges, David’s nephew, started working with his uncle in 2003.

“It’s great to be able to work with my hands and build things," said William Hodges. "It’s a very unique job. It’s a small work place with few employees, so we all know each other and get along.”

His job lies in the details.

“I do all—what we call—the handwork, which is needle and thread work. I press in all the rings and grommets. I do all the webbing, all the fine details, put on all the numbers, that kind of stuff,” said William Hodges.

Others on the crew stitch sails together on sewing machines, cut out the pieces and parts and repair sails that have tears in them.

William grew up sailing with his father and uncle and with his co-workers Noe Goodman and Patrick Lewis.

Lewis has been employed by Santa Cruz Sails since 2001.

"we’re pretty much just making toys," he said. "It may not be terribly important, but it’s fun.”

Lewis was excited about the company’s new toy, a 40-foot automated sail cutter. The surface is a vacuum that sucks the sail to the table. “It works similarly to an air hockey table except it sucks instead of blows,” said Lewis. A rotary knife cuts the sail while it is held in place.

Everything is designed on a program similar to CAD, and David is the one who does most of the design work according to Lewis.

Melanie Ferri, another employee, has worked for Santa Cruz Sails for 12 years.

“It’s nice working in a small sail loft," she said. "It’s very diverse. Almost every day I see something I haven’t seen before. It’s nice to be in an environment where technology—both materials and manufacturing—keeps advancing," said Ferri who is working toward nursing school. Her dream is to one day become a yacht nurse.

She said that working with David Hodges has given her access to encyclopedic knowledge of sailing.

“Dave Hodges is a renowned sailor," Ferri said. "He’s a genius. It’s really fun to come back from racing and do a debriefing with Dave. Without even being there, he can explain what happened. It helps me fine tune my sailing skills."