I've been flying a paraglider for just over 3 years, mainly around my home sites in East Sussex, Bulgaria, the French Alps, Turkey and Spain and so was super excited when invited to shoot a paraglider and hang glider workshop tucked away in a unit in the hillside town of El Bosque. Jesus, pictured here in his workshop, showed me around his man cave.
"Sewing's", his company, along with his mind blowing skill set, it seems, is geared up to repair any level of damage to a paraglider or hang glider wing that the unforgiving Spanish terrain can throw at them. I've personally been a customer in the past, owing to a tear caused in my canopy but another pilot's sketchy take off. 24 hours after the event, I was back on take off, with 2 new panels of material in my wing and ready to fly.
Lines of sewing machines adorn the back wall of the workshop, while several other machines are dotted around the place, designed to take care of a variety of jobs, from mending lines to stitching canopy's. Jesus demonstrated other intriguing machines, one of which tests the strength of the lines that connect the harness to the wing itself and another that calculates the angle at which a line should be attached to a wing.
The sport of paragliding appears to be growing rapidly, with launch and landing sites globally getting busier by the season. The craft that people like Jesus bring to the sport is priceless and I can only imagine that if the sport continues to grow at the pace it currently is - business will be booming for Jesus.
