Perfect Weather for Sun Sails

Britain is experiencing its first proper heat wave in years. All around the UK, barbecues are sizzling, beaches are filling up and – as per usual – us sun-stunned islanders are reporting to hospitals in droves with heat stroke, sun burn, sun poisoning: name it and we’ll get it. Why? Because we aren’t used to it. We have no method for behaving safely in the sun. What we need is to take a leaf out of other countries’ books – countries that are more used to the sun. Time to look into getting sun sails on the agenda.

What are sun sails? One hears the masses cry. Well. They’re tough sheets of something known as shade sail cloth, which is basically a sort of treated canvas, impregnated with UV blocking preparations and serious weather proofing. The sheets are cut to fit pre determined areas, and suspended (like sails, hence the name) either from purpose built masts, or between walls and the sides of buildings. Everyone will have seen them, at some point – they are the kind of thing one finds covering the outside eating areas of trendy river side bars and cafes next to the Thames; or spreading shaded spots over the pavement tables of equally trendy trattoria in Chelsea.

Sun sails, as the foregoing examples suggest, look awesome. They have a kind of dual sophisticated and trendy air that make them look like the kind of thing one would be happy to install in an outside part of one’s home, sun or no sun. There’s a sculptural aspect to them, a kind of artistic thing going on as though they were intended as much to be a sort of outside decoration as to protect one’s family from the sun and the rain. Which, of course, they are – what’s the point in having something temporary, flimsy and ugly when one can get something permanent and beautiful instead? Sun sails really set up a look to a home, making it appear continental, even Antipodean. There’s a look, to gardens and drive ways (the sun sail is equally good at providing shade for cars) fitted with these things that makes the property in question look like it has landed from a TV show set in another country.

The quality of protection given by the sun sail is quite phenomenal – a by product of the fact that they are effectively a design imported from places where really hot sun is an annual normality. Sitting under a sun sail gives the same protection as wearing Factor 85 sun screen – whilst managing, at the same time, to offer real coolness. That’s a trick in itself. One would think that sitting under a thick piece of treated canvas in the sun would have the same effect as camping in an old tent. But no. Sun sails actually deflect the bit of the sun’s rays that gives that “boiling” feeling one gets under normal canvas – leaving, instead, an area of genuine, enjoyable cool.

Summer’s coming – summer’s here. And it’s a scorcher. It’s time to get something that really makes life in the sun a pleasure.