a very different year

Wow. What a year 2018 was...

As mentioned last year, Dan was fortunate enough to have joined Rachael Tapp at Smart Sail Systems Ltd, whilst still working hard at Light Black Design.

In the end, it turned out that the majority of his working day was taken up by the Smart Sail technology, with many long evenings spent doing other more "traditional" work with people like Antony Dodworth at Bright Lite Structures, Tim Tavinor, Simon Fry and Andy Beadsworth at Petticrows with their World Championship winning Dragon, Humphrey and Jaffa at CeCence, Oscar Mead at TeamO and Neil Cheston at Kabina.

Dan's principal role at Smart Sail, now known as We-Sense, was to find potential partners and investors whilst working with Rachael to make sure that the final product works as he feels it should do for the sailors. Dan was able to draw on his long list of friends, in key positions, within the sailing industry, to help guide ever section of both the software and hardware.

Key to the success of our business at We-Sense was signing a deal with Spinlock UK, who will take over the entire production, sales, and marketing of the Smart Sail technology we developed, which is now called Sail Sense to fit in with the Spinlock Sense sector of their business. This was a fantastic opportunity for all parties and gives our technology the best chance of success in the Marine Sectors.

Another huge advantage of our partnership with Spinlock was the chance to be nominated in the DAME awards, at METS in Amsterdam. Not only did the Sail Sense product and app win its highly competitive sector (Marine Electronics) but it also came a close second overall. Something that we are all extremely proud of. A huge thank you to all involved!

So now, as Dan & Rachael work with Spinlock to make sure the last few items on the job list are completed, they are talking to all the other industries that have approached We-Sense, to see how many can use the same baseline technology to monitor such things as shock and vibration in seats (both marine and industrial applications such as RIB & forklift seats etc).

Although all that has taken the majority of the year, as mentioned above, Dan was also extremely fortunate to work with a number of other people on a huge range of projects, some of which are shown below.

2017 saw a huge range of very different projects.

I hate it when you look at companies "latest news" and it's from a year ago, so I have let myself down here a bit. My only excuse was it was quite a busy year...

The vast majority of the initial work I was lucky enough to be involved with in 2017 was with Ben Scott-Geddes from (an Italian OEM), carrying on helping them develop some composite parts for certain road cars. Much as I would like to say what cars they are, I cant.... All I can say is that the study was extremely successful, with the finished parts costing very close to the aluminum parts whilst improving the performance of the car. Which was the initial aim of the project.

I was also lucky enough to help our Ben Ainslie's LR BAR team with the development of their final race spec steering wheels for their America's Cup Race boat. Once again, not much I can say on that project either, apart from to say that as far as I believe, they made it on the final boat!

In mid March, I was contacted by Neil Cheston, who has started a business called Kabina, who are creating great new homes for the UK's floodzones. I have been working closely with both Neil and Guy Lane in creating some of the basic concepts for them, and looking at some of the mass and geometry aspects to make sure the houses all float at the correct time.

In amoungst doing these bigger projects, I have been working woth Simon Fry and his various projects with Provezza. We did some "NVH tweeks" for the TP52 and some work on the Dragon.

As per the last few years, we have been lucky to carry on all the work we have been doing with Antony Dodworth, from Bright Lite Structures. This work has predominatly been on the various aerospace projects he is working on, doing some of the part and tooling design for him.

And finally, and perhaps most exciting, in September 2017 I was introduced to Rachael Tapp, who had founded a start up business called SmartSail Systems and joined her business as a shareholder and director to help her get the SmartSail devices into production.

In simple terms, SmartSail is the only product available for all sailors that monitors the usage, wear & tear and location of all the sails. It is a small device that is fitted to a sail by the sailmaker, and has the sail ID encoded within (i.e. when the sail was made, what materials, what mould etc, how many days before service, how many days before replacement etc). Using the Smart Sail App, the sailors and sailmakers can then continually track the usage and location of that sail. It monitors such items as hours of flogging, hours in UV, where the sail is, temperature range, how may tacks etc. This data is also processed through bespoke cloud based algorithms that we have created with the University of Southampton, which will say how much “life” is left in the sail in relation to the type of sail cloth and hours on UV and flogging etc. Much the same as your car tells you when to get it serviced.

We are both working hard, throughout this year with the business and will be going into full production early in 2019.....

All in all, a very good year.