My Enterprise: From boyhood tacks to global tracks

The 30-Metre Squeeze: How Chris James is Building the World's Toughest Masts with Just Centimetres to Spare

Chris James grew up sailing mirror dinghies little bigger than himself.

He is now manufacturing 30-metre triple spreader masts for an iconic ocean fleet – twelve 72 ft (22m) yachts taking part in the famous Clipper Race.

As managing director of Sparcraft Masts South Africa, James is overseeing the Clipper Race contract, the first of its kind and a milestone deal for a Cape Town maritime manufacturer. The brief? Supply a complete , one-design aluminium spar package for the Clipper RX fleet, engineered specifically for long-distance, round-the-world ocean racing and repeated global circumnavigations.  

That’s quite a step up from patching his own rig on the Midmar Dam.

“Life kind of just guides you – nobody knows where they are going to end up,” James told Cape Chamber this week.

The Clipper deal has allowed James a helmsman’s view of a ‘bucket-list’ race established in 1995. The work involves liaising with the Clipper team, combining their ocean racing experience with his own rig-building and manufacturing expertise. He says the result represents “a significant step forward in offshore one-design yacht engineering”.  

“To see our masts at the heart of this next generation of Clipper yachts is a very meaningful milestone for our entire team.”

One of James’s biggest challenges is finding the space to work on 30m masts; it necessitated moving the operation out of the main Sparcraft facility into an adjoining building. “If we put a 30m mast down the middle of our factory it would disrupt it completely, so we’ve set up a separate place in different building where we are put together.”

“When the mast is assembled, it’s 10cm mm from one wall and 15 cm from the far wall! To get past you have to crawl underneath it,” James said.

Sparcraft Masts SA is one of the few factories worldwide still able to make high-spec aluminium masts, amid a global shift to composite masts. While the aluminium mast itself is more-or-less unchanged from a technology point of view, rigging generally has seen big advancements, including in the accessories and components that fit onto the mast.  

James said the job is likely to last until the middle of next year, with the first mast already shipped to China. “We will do them in batches of five. We’ve got 14 more to build.”

Vanessa Davidson, co-founding director of BlueCape and Vice Chair of the Cape Chamber Oceans Economy stream, said: “BlueCape welcomes the award of the Clipper fleet mast contract to Sparcraft by Clipper Ventures as a strong vote of confidence in South Africa’s marine manufacturing capability and global competitiveness.”

The 15th edition of the Clipper Round the World Yacht Race starts in late 2027. The unique event trains non-professional sailors to compete aboard fully-crewed matched stripped-down ocean racing yachts, taking on the full circumnavigation or one or more of eight individual legs.  

Sparcraft Masts operates from a 2,000 square metre, fully covered manufacturing facility in Montague Gardens, Cape Town, equipped with state-of-the-art fabrication, rigging, CNC machining, fit-out and a climate-controlled spray booth. 

The company is the leading mast manufacturer in Southern Africa, supplying both custom and production aluminium and carbon rig solutions for catamarans and monohulls.