The loft above the old sail-loft on Wharf Street smelled richly of boiled linseed oil, beeswax, raw flax fiber. The sweet, grassy scent of cured river reeds. Across four thirty-foot wooden frame stand tables, Jo Saye and Apprentice Dima were laying out the wide emerald-green composite sleeves that would line the emergency bypass water chutes at the Turning Basin.
Jo knelt on the scrubbed floorboards in her linen work trousers, her horn-rimmed glasses pushed up onto her silver hair, a brass seam gauge held firmly in her left hand. Beside her, Dima was threading a heavy curved sailmaker’s needle with triple-twisted flax thread that had been drawn through a cake of hot sheep fat.
‘Now watch the tension on the lengthwise seam, Dima,’ Jo instructed. Her fingers ran along the double-folded selvage of the composite membrane. ‘This is not an ordinary sail that must hold together at all costs. This is an offering safety seam. If the river surge exceeds forty-two pounds of dynamic head, this thread must fail cleanly along this precise twenty-foot line.’
Dima looked up from his needle, his youthful face clouded with skilled doubt. ‘Master Jo... My master in the Weavers’ Guild spent four years beating me with an ash rod if my seams weren’t strong enough to hang an anchor. It feels like a sin to sew a seam that is meant to burst.’
