SAILMAKERS ON THE DART
Our Story
Bespoke sails and hand-tailored covers —
cut, stitched and finished by hand on the South Coast.
Four decades of craft, in chapters below
01 | WHERE IT BEGAN
A working loft on the Dart, and a thread that never broke
For decades there has been a working sail loft on the Dart, and the thread of craft that runs through it has never been broken. The story starts in the 1980s, when Don Campbell set up a sail loft on Foss Street in Dartmouth — building bespoke, well-fitted sails for the boats of the estuary and the bay, and earning, one sail at a time, the loyal local following the business still serves today.
That craft tradition runs deeper still. The people who would later steer the company learned their trade at Westaway Sails — the Devon loft founded in 1971 whose sails have been carried by some of Britain’s most celebrated sailors, among them Dame Ellen MacArthur and Sir Robin Knox-Johnston. It is a lineage we are quietly proud to be part of.
02 | THE CALIBRA YEARS
Growth, and a return to the one thing that mattered
In 1996 the Foss Street loft joined forces with the rigging business that worked below it, and for a time traded as Calibra Marine — the point at which Don stepped back from the loft he had founded. The combined company grew quickly, becoming UK agent for the American builder Tartan Yachts in 1998 and broadening into rigging, brokerage and marine equipment.
As that wider business eventually moved away from sailmaking, the loft’s true calling remained exactly where it had always been: designing and building sails.
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A working sail loft on the Dart, and a thread of craft that has never been broken.
03 | A NAME REBORN
2006: back to doing one thing, properly
In 2006, Dart Sails and Covers was relaunched as a dedicated sail loft under Simon Unwin — formerly managing director of Westaway Sails — bringing decades of pedigree back to a business built to do one thing properly: design and make bespoke sails and hand-tailored covers for the boats of the Dart, Torbay and the wider South Coast.
Sailmaker Helen Pedrick was part of the team that relaunched the loft that year, and she is still at the bench today.
04 | NEW HANDS AT THE HELM
2015: two halves of the trade, brought together
In January 2015, Dominic Hanley and Sean Semmens bought the business, bringing together two complementary halves of the trade.
Dominic came into sailmaking in 2008, training at Westaway Sails before rising to loft floor manager and broadening his experience with Ullman Sails — and he races what he builds, which is the surest test of any sail.
Sean trained at Westaway in 1987, under Simon Unwin, and after a spell in spar-making returned to sailmaking in 1993, building a reputation as a sail designer for National and European championship-winning boats as well as classic and blue-water cruising yachts. Today Sean continues with the loft as our Sail Designer, with Dominic as managing director.
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We race what we build — the surest test of any sail.
05 | THE TEAM & THE CRAFT
A loft is only as good as the hands in it
Canvas and cover maker Jamie Pring joined in 2012, and Mark Underwood, another experienced cover maker, joined in 2022 as demand grew. Together with Helen, Sean, Laura and Dom, they make up a small, skilled team who design, cut, sew and finish every sail and cover in-house — no outsourcing, no shortcuts.
Whether it is a new mainsail measured to your rig, a recut that gives an old sail another season, or a hand-tailored cover built to fit your boat exactly, the work is done on the loft floor by people who will still be here when you come back.
06 | A HOME OF OUR OWN
2026: the biggest step in our history
In 2026 we took the biggest step in the company’s history: we bought our own loft. For most of our history, the roof over the loft belonged to someone else — the Foss Street building that had been our home since the 1980s was sold in 2017, and we moved to a rented workshop at Nelson Road, on the edge of Dartmouth.
When that chapter, too, drew towards its close, we decided we would not rent again. Instead we invested in premises of our own — Unit 1 at Castor Farm Estate in Brixham. After a full renovation, including a new insulated roof and a rebuilt loft floor over a third larger than the old one, we closed the Dartmouth loft at the end of 2025 and opened the doors in Brixham in January 2026.
Yes — we know. Dart Sails and Covers, now in Brixham. But the move puts us on the side of the Dart closest to most of the local marinas, and central to the whole South Coast we serve. The address has changed; the team, the craft and the standards have not. For the first time in our history, we work from a loft we own outright — no landlord, no lease.
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For most of our history, the roof belonged to someone else. Now it’s ours.
