Artivist Series - Angela Abshier
founder Sail to Shelter
Angela Abshier is a commercial lawyer and founder Sail to Shelter, a not-for-profit that repurposes elite and super yacht sails into shade and shelter for humanitarian purposes. Angela came up with the idea for Sail to Shelter after being introduced to offshore racing. She envisioned that the strong but light weight fabrics might be useful in settings where permanent construction is too costly and building supplies might not be readily available or suitable. A single sail large enough to cover a soccer field. Because the sailing community has yet to step up and take responsibility for their sails 97% end up in landfills. Angela estimates each sail is equivalent to 10,000 water bottles.
Video conversation with Angela… click here
What Angela talks about …
Angela grew up in Wyoming and originally went college to be study journalism but pivoted to law when she heard about Napster and the potential it had for dispossessing musical artists from their artistic property. Angela believes that when a system is broken and you have an idea of how to fix it or change it or make it better, it’s worth it to step in and make it happen. After she was introduced to sailing and she saw the massive super yachts with their huge sails, her creative mind took hold. She learned that some of the material is extraordinary and yet it had a limited life span. She wanted to make a positive difference with the decommissioned sails that otherwise ended up as landfill. Angela has invested her own human capital and worked with architects and others to find ways to use the sails for humanitarian purposes. One of the first projects for Sail to Shelter is installing sails in Maui to answer a number of different issues. Maui suffered a devastating fire in August 2023.
Show Notes
00:00:01 Pamela Ferris-Olson Today on the Wo(men) Mind the Water Artivist Series on womenmindthewater.com. I'm speaking with Angela Abshier. She's a tech savvy, data-driven commercial lawyer. Angela is also the founder of Sail to Shelter a not-for-profit that repurposes elite and super yacht sails into shade and shelter for humanitarian aid around the world.
The Wo(men) Mind the Water Artivist Series podcast on womenmindthewater.com engages artists in conversation about their work and explores their connection with the ocean. Through their stories, Wo(men) Mind the Water hopes to inspire and encourage action to protect the ocean and her creatures.
00:00:46 Pamela Ferris-Olson I'm speaking with Angela Abshier. Angela earned a law degree from the University of Baltimore Law School with a focus on intellectual property law. Angela has worked in many areas of business, including product development. In 2020, she founded Sail to Shelter, a not-for-profit that transforms elite sails into shade and shelter. Angela came up with the idea when she started offshore racing. Her idea was that these strong but lightweight fabrics might be used in settings where permanent construction is too costly and where building supplies might not be readily available or suitable for the purpose.
00:01:30 Pamela Ferris-Olson Welcome, Angela. I am grateful that you are able to join me on the Wo(men) Mind the Water Artivist Series podcast. I'm interested to hear more about your creative solution, but before we explore Sail to Shelter, I'd like to know a little bit about you.
Your story begins in Wyoming, where you grew up. Tell us about Wyoming. What was your life like growing up there?
00:01:54 Angela Abshier Thank you Pam, for having me. I'm so excited to be here. I appreciate the opportunity to share my story. Wyoming is a long way from the water that is for sure. I was born in Arkansas and my father's business moved us to Wyoming where I developed a huge love and respect for nature and being outside and also appreciated that I might like to be outside where it was warmer. So I just turned out to be maybe more of a lizard than a polar bear.
00:02:27 Pamela Ferris-Olson Why did you choose to study journalism when you went off to college?
00:02:32 Angela Abshier I loved words. I wanted to be a speechwriter. And then what happened was Napster happened. When Napster happened, I was appalled at the idea that we weren't going to pay artists for their work and it motivated me to go to law school to try to understand that tension between our commerce and technology. What were we going to do if we weren't going to pay musicians anymore?
00:03:03 Pamela Ferris-Olson OK, so how did you become interested in sailing?
00:03:10 Angela Abshier The beauty of it, the water, the romance. It always has been fascinating to me and it, for some reason, wasn't a yearning for me. It wasn't like I've spent my life trying to get on a sailboat. I mean, I've always appreciated it. I've been on sailing trips. I've done some things, but it wasn't until I got in a race that I was …So whether it was the competition or it just was different, it turned into a different thing from being this beautiful sailing experience into this competitive dance. That you're in this amazing team or that it was completely different.
00:03:56 Pam Ferris-Olson So somewhere along the line you became involved with elite sailing and Grand Prix racing. What do these terms mean and how specialized are they from the general notion of competitive sailing?
00:04:09 Angela Abshier It's a great question. I've spent much of the last four years learning about sail material and how there are as many different sailing materials available as there are
weather patterns around the world, so cloth is made special for different weather conditions and for different boats. I mean it's like thinking of a car and that encompasses Formula One race cars and broken down Pintos. Those are all cars, right? So it's the same as boats. There are just as many options and versions in boats, sailing boats which then would be that many options in sails and more because you can have a million that have a dozen different sails per boat.
00:05:03 Angela Abshier So elite and Grand Prix just move us into really a size and a quality that has durability and functionality requirements that are extraordinary and the material is designed to drag a ship across the ocean. What else can it do?
00:05:23 Pam Ferris-Olson Some of these sails apparently are large enough to cover a soccer field. Between their technical materials and their size, I imagine these sails aren't likely to be inexpensive or easy to purchase. Give us an idea of what a sail might cost and how many companies manufacture these.
00:05:43 Angela Abshier I cannot tell you how much they cost because I don't know. But I will tell you that it is a highly specialized skill set and there are only about four major sail manufacturers and then there are smaller sail manufacturers around the world. But there are four or five major sail manufacturers.
00:06:03 Pam Ferris-Olson This is like the top end of sailing I imagine. So how did you get to be introduced to Grand Prix racing if it's like this really narrow type of racing?
00:06:17 Angela Abshier I just asked a lot of questions. I kept proposing a solution to problems, like humanitarian aid and a valuable second use for the material. And it led me to the material that would be most suited for my needs. Whether it's a feature or a bug, I'm not afraid to write a cold e-mail or make a cold telephone call and ask someone for help. I've been really, really fortunate in the responses from people.
00:06:51 Pam Ferris-Olson Good for you. I like that you've taken the idea of sailing, thought about how to use the sails, and then figured out where you could get sails that would support your idea. Do you know how fast these boats go? I mean, we've got this highly technical sail and they're large.
00:07:12 Angela Abshier 20 knots. You can race above 20 knots, 23 miles an hour. OK, that's a smaller boat. But you can get a boat cooking.
00:07:24 Pam Ferris-Olson OK, it doesn't mean anything to me cause you know, I think of car speeds. But I'm sure when I research it 20 knots is pretty fast.
00:07:34 Angela Abshier 20 knots is 23 miles an hour.
00:07:38 Pam Ferris-Olson Do you think it's the speed or the technological innovation that draws people to the sport?
00:07:45 Angela Abshier It's the water. It's the water that's lovely just being out on the water.
I mean it give me chills just thinking it. We're all just trying to get to the water, right? We're all just blue minds. There isn't anybody that I've met that isn't there because they love the ocean and the water.
00:08:03 Pam Ferris-Olson All right. So you're sailing among people who love the water and some who want to go faster. But how is it that your mind turned to repurposing the sales for humanitarian purposes?
00:08:17 Angela Abshier This is where it gets good. I'll try to keep it brief but at the time I was working in sustainable fashion, creating a secondary marketplace for dead stock material in the garment industry. So there's an entire ecosystem of material that has never been turned into a garment for one reason or another. And because that's what I was doing I had visibility. When I stepped on to a sailboat, I was thinking where is this dead stock going? And then where are these sails going because they're essentially not trash. They're just not winning races anymore. So it's a highly technical tuned instrument and after a few races it might not race as fast. And so because I came up with a mother and a grandmother who saved every piece of ribbon that they ever had off of anything in the world, it's just in my nature to figure out what we are going to do with it next. And when I tried to help, I thought we'll just help with homelessness. These sail are all over and they're located in our in cities that have the worst problem with homelessness. What a perfect solution.
00:09:42 Angela Abshier But when you try to help homeless people in this country, it gets very difficult and it becomes very political. It didn't feel like my calling to solve that problem. It felt like my calling to solve this one. And if I can prove it in disaster areas where people are much less critical over what we're bringing to help them, then I can prove what we can do. Then if anybody wants to take what we've done in these other areas and utilize what we've figured out to help homeless problems in other countries, fine. But for me, the amount of material that is available for this should be used for people who literally have nothing.
00:10:28 Pam Ferris-Olson I think that's really worthwhile. I have to say that living here in Maine, I know there are a number of companies that repurpose sails. They do it into totes and some into clothes. But to my knowledge, no one else has thought of repurposing sales to serve as shelters. So having started my own nonprofit in 2022, I'm aware of the work involved in getting off the ground. It's not easy. What obstacles has sailed to shelter encountered? For example, have you difficulty getting the sails or getting the capital to create the shelters?
00:11:06 Angela Abshier Yes, everything's been difficult. But I don't mind that part. I knew it was going to be difficult. You just prepare for it to be difficult and prepare to solve the problems as they come up. Every time somebody said you can't do it for this reason, this reason and this reason I went to try to figure out how to get over that obstacle. We are in our second year of research at North Carolina State University in the Textile Engineering Department because some of this material, I mean all of it is nothing but polyester. And none of it can be recycled, and all of it is going into landfill. So we're trying to figure out innovative ways to break this down or turn them into road patches or roads or buildings or blocks. But in the meantime, some of the material is extraordinary and can become refugee camps. And so why not?
00:12:10 Pam Ferris-Olson I think I heard you say that you haven't built the shelters yet.
00:12:15 Angela Abshier That's still in a concept form. They're on Maui right now. We are installing a number of different solutions on Maui right now.
00:12:23 Pam Ferris-Olson OK, that's good to know. Well I like the message that you're sending. You knew it was going to be difficult. You were prepared for the frustration and you accepted the challenge. That's great. I hope listeners will think about that when they try and tackle something they want to make a difference in. So why Angela did you choose to devote your personal capital to making this particular vision a reality?
00:12:58 Angela Abshier I mean, I'm not sure that I chose that. I think that as this evolved, don't get me wrong, I'm open to taking money. But I've had to prove. There's been so much resistance. That it's been hard to raise money for it, and so there's been so much in kind donation from transportation grants to architects and engineers who give, who have given me 160 hours. We've had design charettes full of 12 and 15 architects and engineers. We've done amazing things because people really are interested in solving the problem. When you put the material in someone's hands and you explain what we have an opportunity to do, then it comes clear the material just isn't readily available. It's not something you can go buy for they're made for one thing and that one thing most people never see. I believe that the sailing community needs to take responsibility for the sails. They've never done it. Not once. 97% of all sail go into landfill. And they always have. And until somebody does something they always will.
00:14:15 Pam Ferris-Olson So I guess your wildest dream is for Sail to Shelter become so successful that the demand for the shelters will [never] outgrow the availability of supply.
00:14:25 Angela Abshier Well that happen before I ever started [demand for shelter out paces the availability of sail supply].I mean, we'll never be able to. We'll never have an enough sails to help the displaced refugee crisis. And they're not going to quit making sails.
00:14:42 Pam Ferris-Olson OK. I wonder what happens when they run out of petroleum product.
00:14:48 Angela Abshier Wouldn't it be nice?
00:14:51 Pam Ferris-Olson As a person who spends time on the water, I wonder what you think about the state of the ocean.
Where do you think our attention would best be focused?
00:15:02 Angela Abshier Ocean plastic. Get them out.
00:15:06 Pam Ferris-Olson OK, that's a simple, direct answer. We all need to pay attention to that because each one of us can, in our own way, reduce plastic. Angela, do you have advice for listeners who dream of making a positive difference? What if they think they lack the skills to tackle a big idea or simply feel overwhelmed by the notion of taking on a big idea? How might they work toward their dream?
00:15:31 Angela Abshier Just don't give up. It never made sense to me until I had the choice to give up or not give up. And so to me the problem was big enough. If you find a problem in your heart that's big enough and it's different. People are always going to want to do things the same way. But if the system is broken and you have an idea about how you could fix it, or change it, or make it better then it's worth it. So don't give up.
00:16:13 Pam Ferris-Olson All right. Thank you Angela for joining me on the Wo(men) Mind the Water Artivist Series podcast and sharing your story. I think you are a terrific role model. An example of how people, no matter what their background, can find ways to make a positive difference.
00:16:31 Pam Ferris-Olson I'd like to remind listeners that I've been speaking with Angela Absher, a lawyer and product innovator who founded a nonprofit to create emergency shelter alternatives from high tech racing sales fabric that has outlived its original purpose. Angela Abshier is the latest guest on the Wo(men) Mind the Water Artivist Series podcast. The series can be viewed on womenmindthewater.com, Museum on Main Street, and YouTube. An audio-only version of this podcast is available on womenminethewater.com, on iTunes and Spotify. Wo(men) Mind the Water is grateful to Jaine Rice for the use of her song Women of Water. All rights for the Wo(men) Mind the Water name and logo belong to Pam Ferris-Olson. This is Pam Ferris-Olson.