San Rafael resident transforms used sails into beautiful bags
While cruising around the world for seven years, Emma Casey got used to having plenty of free time on her hands. Surrounded by just sea and sky for days on end, she took the time to appreciate the chance to slow down and connect with nature. She wrote, read, cooked, drew and sewed, an activity she learned during her childhood in Woodacre. And on one trip from Mexico to the Marquesas, she transformed the scraps of a tanbark sail into her take on a classic sailor’s ditty bag.
It would become the inspiration for her new business Landfall Leatherworks when she returned to land last year. From her Sausalito workshop, surrounded by the area’s historic maritime history, the San Rafael resident creates bags using repurposed sails, leather and brass. They can be found at landfallleatherworks.com.
Q What got you into sewing?
A My dad owns the Canvas Works, the marine canvas shop in Sausalito. He taught me to sew and do leatherwork. In high school for awhile, I made bags and sold them. I have always enjoyed working with my hands and creating something beautiful, useful and functional from scratch.
Q Why sails?
A For me, there’s the emotional connection to them having lived at sea for seven years. But in our current world of fast fashion and mass production, we need to return our focus to local, community-driven and preexisting materials, and while unfortunately modern sails are made from dacron, that’s nonrecyclable and nonbiodegradable, they are durable, water-resistant and easy to clean. My sails have been donated. There’s a whimsical idea of the sails having been on voyages and they have a history engrained in them.
Q How did you get into sailing?
A My grandfather had an O’Day 37 in Sausalito when I was a kid, and he and my grandmother would take me sailing when I was pretty young around the bay. After I graduated college, I knew I wanted to spend some time traveling before settling into any semblance of a career and I figured that cruising would be a cheap interesting way to see some of the world. I scoured Latitude 38 magazine’s section called captains looking for crew, and I found the captain of a cutter down in Half Moon Bay who was willing to take me south. That first leg was a bit of a misadventure, but subsequently in San Diego, where I jumped ship, I met more cruisers along the way, so I ended up being on three different boats between California and New Zealand, and then in New Zealand I met my now-ex boyfriend who I sailed with for another four years. It became my lifestyle and it’s funny, if I think about trying to describe to someone what it was like working on a sailboat for seven years, it feels so natural, it’s like asking me, what’s it like being an only child? I don’t know any alternative. And the cruising lifestyle is addicting, it’s often miserable, but it’s incredibly freeing and it’s very focused on nature, the elements, on a slow pace and it allows you visit places that are incredibly off-the-beaten path.
Q How was it coming back?
A That was a tough choice. People would introduce me as this is my friend, my daughter who is sailing around the world and so I had a little bit of an identity crisis, thinking OK, who am I if I am not doing that right now? I am finding it more difficult to adjust to living on land than it was to adjust to life at sea. Starting this business is very much my way of landing and grounding and it’s my landfall — landfall is the moment when you first see land after being at sea. It’s something to give me purpose and something to pour myself into that still feels tied to my experiences in that lifestyle.
Q What are some memorable places you’ve been?
A We stopped at a few atolls in Micronesia. These are incredibly isolated and some are uninhabited. Some have small villages and the marine life is phenomenal. I like free diving and spear fishing and there is something so meditative to me about being underwater, too, and it was so reassuring to see that there still are islands with incredibly healthy reef ecosystems. And Madagascar was interesting in terms of the sailing community there, because there’s a lot of local sailing, and they make their sails out of what they can find. These people are real talented mariners and it was really amazing.