From single mother to sail maker

The passage from single mother to sailmaker has been anything but smooth seas for Nelson’s Pirate Pearl. But life has taught her that there’s no storm large enough, nor ocean wide enough that can’t be navigated.

A mean northerly wind is brewing in the clouds covering the Atawhai hills. The grey billowing mass is darkening by the minute and is giving the windmill at Founders Heritage Park a run for its money.

Down a quaint street, the shop sign for a sail maker is starting to swing in the breeze, while inside, Pirate Pearl is keeping a weather eye on the situation.

"I watch it carefully and have a few bolt holes,” she says of the rare moments she is forced to become a landlubber.

It happens when the wind and sea prevent her getting home to her boat moored in Nelson Haven.

Pearl’s large blue catamaran Aorere, named after Te Tai-o-Aorere (Tasman Bay) is symbolic of her hard-won freedom from convention, the pain of loss and the crucial role it plays in the life of her threeyear-old grandson, Kea and his cousins Leo and Rowan.

Pearl has joined other grandparents to help support Kea’s mother in raising him after his father – Pearl’s son Louey Sandlant was killed.

He was a passenger in a small plane that crashed in Raglan two years ago.

“We have all tried hard to fill in the gap – I provide the pirate adventures.”

Aorere also bears Pearl’s handiwork in its sails, and the pirate flag fluttering from its lanyard, but the passage so far has been far from plain sailing.

Pirate Pearl, aka Robyn Holmes, is one of very few sailmakers in Nelson.

From her loft at Founders Park, she churns out repairs and new sails for customers around the country. It is a living museum of the tools of the trade, and a gallery of her own art works that reflect a life wedded to the sea.

The moniker she gained early on.

“Most people I know call me Pearl, or “Pirate” but my family call me Robyn.

“I used to dress up as a pirate, but it really goes back to the 1980s when I was involved with the Women’s House in Nelson.”

She once went to a meeting dressed as “Aunty Pearl”, complete with a handbag fit for a queen, after which the name stuck.

The patchwork quilt that is the life of Pirate Pearl began with a childhood in Greymouth, an unfinished degree at Canterbury University, and some years she describes as great times as a ski bum.

Then came single parenthood, poverty, and a car she was gifted that she packed up and drove to Nelson with her young daughter.

She is not entirely sure if she was born with the sail bug, or if she caught it after arriving in Nelson.

“I suspect there are probably sea captains in the family, but my family are all Coast pioneer types going back to the gold rush days.”

It was the impromptu purchase of a small sailing dinghy that triggered the fever.

“I was living in a small flat in Beachville Crescent with my daughter Kim, and no furniture when mum came to stay.

“I was sleeping on a Kapok mattress on the floor and mum was horrified. She sent me $1000 to buy furniture, which was a lot of money, and while I did buy some, I also bought a sailing dinghy…that was the start.”

Pearl met and eventually married Phil Sandlant.

The pair embarked on a life at sea, aboard the small cruising yacht, Puffin, they had spotted for sale at the Nelson Marina.

Pearl’s younger brother Martin Holmes, a sailor from his early years on the Coast, also moved to Nelson and joined them in the purchase of Puffin.

“Phil and I sailed that boat for a whole year, with a baby, Louey, and five-year-old Kim. We lived in the Sounds for most of that time.

“Marty then bought our share and we started building another boat.”

Louey was about three-years-old when they launched the traditional sailing boat, which became the flagship for a foray into sailing charters from Marahau in the 1980s.

“We were doing that until the rules got tighter and more expensive.

“We realised we needed a bigger boat that could take a lot of people and go faster, so we built Aorere.”

Pearl and Phil designed the catamaran and built it in the yard of their Motueka home. In hindsight, she says the project was probably the beginning of the end of their 25-year partnership.

“I went to stay with a sister on the Coast and sulked there for about six months.

“I came back and tried living in the house but the kids had left, the dog had died and everyone had gone so I thought, stuff that.

“I realised what I was mourning the most was that dream of the adventure.”

She took over Aorere and Phil got the house. Pearl, who then was not quite 50 and lacking the qualifications to run commercial charters, was at first a little daunted.

“I suddenly had a boat which I didn’t have much idea how to sail alone. But I bit it off in little pieces and took on what I could.

“If it was a nice day I’d sail to Anchorage.”

Louey, by then 18 and a qualified skipper, teamed up with his mother to help run the boat.

“Louey was the captain and I was the crew for the first season which was pretty funny.

“Occasionally he’d say, ‘Mum what do you think we should do now? and I’d say, ‘I don’t know, you’re the captain’.”

Pearl then went to polytechnic and earned her skipper’s ticket. The venture into sail making was an offshoot of Pearl’s love of crafts and canvas work. It was like most other things to happen in her life, quite accidental but she is grateful for the chance to have learned from a master at it – the late Bud Nalder.

Pearl says he eventually ran out of patience with the number of repairs needed on her second-hand sails.

“The sails I had kept blowing out, until one day Bud said, ‘Just do it yourself’.

“I got used to the machinery, and when it came time to make a new mainsail, I worked on it with Bud.

“Bud encouraged me in my sailing career and taught me to improve my sail making skills to a professional standard.

“I learned the real special parts of the craft from him.”

The Nalders were a big part of the legacy of sail making in Nelson, which Pearl says she strives to uphold.

As the wind picks up and blows through the open door of the loft at Founders, Pearl, who is nearing 65 switches her focus from the past to the future. She hopes there will be someone to take over the craft, because Nelson would be all the poorer without a sail maker in its mix.