Westsail Story Podcast

Hello and welcome back to the podcast. This is another episode with Kern Ferguson, a sailmaker who started his career in the Westsail loft. This is a technical episode, where we begin to explore elements of sail design. To begin exploring sails, though, have to first understand the importance of the materials that they are made from. Here, we begin by talking about sail fabrics. This includes how the strands are oriented in relationship to their load bearing capacity, the various kinds of materials that sails can be made from, and the attributes used for assessing their effectiveness and application. Exploring aspects of sail design is becoming a little mini-series and I look forward to exploring more of this topic with you all in the future! Enjoy the episode! Jake

This episode is with Harbor Partin. He's the third owner of Selah, hull number 413, and located in Destin, FL. His grandfather first built the boat from a kit and it has been handed down through the generations. He now runs it as a charter sailing yacht. You can find him at https://www.fairwindssailingco.com/

Kern Ferguson is a sailmaker and started his career in the Westsail sail loft. In this episode, we discuss his life and background as a sailmaker and as an Alaskan bush pilot. Enjoy!

This is the second half of the interview with Mark Mills, a liveaboard sailor from New Orleans. He's a former Navyman and a captain for TowBoat US. He's also been a great help sorting through issues on my own projects. In this episode we chat about his past and upcoming trips aboard Second Wind.

Mark Mills is a Tow Boat Captain based in New Orleans. He and his wife live aboard Second Wind, another Westsail 32, which they've done quite a bit of work on. He's also been a big help to me personnally, talking me through projects last year. In fact, when i found I had wood rot in the compression post, I nearly had a heart attack, but Mark calmly helped me troubleshoot and identify solutions. So with that, enjoy episode 6 with Mark Mills.

In this episode, we wrap up our conversation with Jimmy Quast. He built his Westsail 32 from a bare hull, sailed it all over the Caribbean, and in this episode, heads back up into the Chesapeake Bay. Join us for the finale of our conversation with Jimmy!

E4. Hull 198: Jimmy Quast (2 of 3) by Jake

The next few episodes will be an interview with Jimmy Quast. Jimmy and his wife Cynthia are the original owners of Hull 198. They bought it as a bare hull in their 20's, sailed it down to the Caribbean, and then proceeded on about 20 years of adventures. While down there, the boat was beat up in a hurricane, complete with 2 foot holes in the hull. Jimmy rolled up his sleeves and built the boat... again. He now has one of the most beautiful Westsail on the East Coast of the USA. This interview runs nearly 3 hours and so is split up into a few episodes. The arrangement is as follows: 1) Early days and building the boat 2) Life in the Caribbean 3) Return to the Chesapeake and personal outlooks on life Jimmy also builds Admiralty models, including one of the USS Constitution, which took him 8 years to complete. His newest project is shown here in this profile photo. If you'd like to see a few more photos of Jimmy, his boat Odyssey, or his Admiralty projects, check out my site at http://highs-lows.com/westsail-story-podcast Take care! Jake

In Episode 2, I finish up the chat with Bud Taplin, Westsail's first production manager. In this half, Bud just departed from Westsail to start his own boat building business and then on to starting the Westsail Parts Store. If you haven't listened to Episode 1 yet, I highly recommend you start there! To visit Bud's company website, Westsail Parts Store, access it here. Enjoy the episode!

For the debut episode, I catch up with Bud Taplin, Westsail's first production manager. He's got a lot of history about these boats, and his business, Westsail Parts Store, has kept these 40 year old boats on the water all this time. In fact, he has so much history, we had to split this episode into 2 different episodes. Standby for access to Episode 2! To visit Bud's company website, Westsail Parts Store, access it here. Enjoy the episode!