Like every day, tens of sailboats sail down the Nile River or anchor on the beach parallel to the marina, Saad Al-Hamami sits under a tree in one of the parks overlooking the Nile Corniche, where he cuts and sews over five metres cotton cloth, using the space in the park to spread and inspect the sail while designing it.
For fifty years, Saad spent his days dealing with boats, for he is one of the most distinguished craftsmen in designing and making boat sails in Aswan city. Despite being born in the rural Al-Ramadi village, Edfu town, his relationship started with the Nile while he was ten years old, “when I was a boy, I used to watch how boat sails were made, and I loved this profession and wanted to learn it without asking anyone to teach me”, Saad Told Ain Al-Aswani.
In the beginning, Saad used a small piece of cloth to train on sail making until he excelled it, in addition to his carpentering skill which he learned from a carpenter called “Mahdi”, enabling him to deal with sailboats skeletons.
Throughout his life, Saad worked several jobs; among them was fishing, working on ferries and tourist ships, and transporting goods across the Nile. His first job as a boat sail maker was in the sixties with a Nubian boat owner in Aswan, and he has been a sail maker until this day, moving between his village in Edfu and Aswan city.
Saad Al-Hamami confirms that originally sailboats were used to transport goods between cities, yet over the years, they became popular for tourist trips. In order to make sails for boats, Saad uses cotton fabric made in Mahalla El Kubra city, clarifying, “the cloth is cut into strips with a length befitting each mast for the boat, then each side is sewn with threads fixed from the outside, and after sewing is completed, the sail is installed on the boat”.
Saad needs four days to make a sail if he was working on it alone, so that he can calculate the sail lengths correctly after pulling each side so it takes a triangular shape, after that, the boat is moved to the Nile marina to install the sail on it.
The sail is installed on the wooden pole with the aid of several people, as one of the young men climbs the readied pole using a ladder to fix the front of the sail, his colleagues help him in tying the sails using ropes and fixing it well so the sail can bear the strong wind, the process takes about four hours with the help of Saad.
The cost of making a boat sail amounts to about 6,000 EGP, including labour and materials such as strings and ropes. The boat sails after the sail gets installed, and periods of low tourist activity are used for sails’ maintenance.
In addition to tourist Nile cruises in Aswan, the boats go through other tourist trips from Aswan to Cairo, accompanied by Tourism Police, exploring other cities' landmarks.
