Jasper Smith’s formative years were full of outdoor adventure; of climbing, mountaineering and sailing, and while his professional background would eventually anchor itself in the software business, the older he got, the keener he became to build tangible products that could bring others the kind of experiences he had so enjoyed. “I’ve owned boats for the last 25 years and I’ve done quite a lot of long-distance passages,” he says. “I’ve sailed from Sydney to Alaska; from the Faroe Islands to South Africa. I’ve done various transatlantic ocean voyages. So I was really interested in where form meets function and where adventure really plugs into that.”
That’s essentially how Arksen began. “There are very few sailors who don’t dream of sailing off into the distance and across the horizon, but actually, the vast majority of boats are
