Bespoke
And in all sizes… At the same time as making ever bigger inroads into the sharp end of the superyacht and grand prix fleets, Doyle One Design continue to knock it out the park in classes like the J/70 and Etchells
Rolex Yachtsman of the Year 2017 and reigning J/70 world champion Peter Duncan knows from personal experience that working closely with Doyle Sails can seriously improve your performance.
‘Awesome!’ whooped Peter, newly crowned as J/70 world champion 2017 on the dockside in Porto Cervo, Sardinia. ‘Everything seemed to go our way – it was just one of those weeks! This fleet has some really great talent, and the organisers and the yacht club have both done an amazing job.
‘Most of all, though, I want to credit the crew. Victor, Jud and Willem have all been just fantastic.’
Any winning crew deserves props but this one in particular had something special about it. Willem van Waay is a Doyle sails rep and a professional sailor for 25 years. He understands the J/70 class better than almost anyone. If you can’t find your A game, Willem knows exactly where it is and can show you the shortest route there.
Jud is Jud Smith, president of Doyle one-design. Before last year’s J/70 Worlds win, Jud’s best year was 2006, when he finally won his first Etchells Worlds after years in the top
64 SEAHORSE
10, and the Rolex Yachtsman of the Year award followed.
Smith loves detail, and Doyle’s work in the J/70 class is about detailed insight. When Europe started building J/70s in 2015, Smith was one of the first to notice that the Seldén mast on the European boats had slightly different characteristics to the Southern Spars mast on the US boats, with a marginally stiffer section that seemed to like more rake than its transatlantic counterpart.
Having already designed a higher- cut radial J6R jib for more efficient inhauling, he went on to design an even higher cut jib for the European boats, the J8R, to handle the extra mast rake. Most sails are also available in grey to cut glare and another distinguishing factor is that Doyle mainsails are all crosscut rather than radial, as he found that crosscut sails respond better to backstay and traveller play when beating upwind.
For the upcoming Worlds in Marblehead, Massachusetts – a light air venue – Smith has designed and sold mains built from a fabric of lighter weight.
The key difference is the cloth
Above: The winning team blasts across the Solent at full throttle. Peter Duncan, Willem van Waay and Jud Smith first raced together at the 2017 J/70 Europeans in Cowes, finishing in third place. That regatta, held in 25-35 knots of wind, proved to be a valuable
heavy-weather shakedown sail for the Worlds. ‘It was one of our wilder rides...’ Willem recalls
Doyle uses for its jibs. Specifically for the J/70 class, Smith worked directly with Dimension Polyant in Germany to develop a new resin treatment for high-quality cloth, with the result that Doyle's jibs now have the lowest stretch pro-radial woven fabric on the market.
Where did this story start? Smith was introduced to the J/70 by Peter Duncan, a friend from his Etchells days. ‘We went three-up and raced at Long Island in October 2012,’ Smith recalls. ‘All of the sudden it took off and we started playing around and I thought “This boat’s really cool!”‘
‘The fleet was established back in 2012. J Boats had a promotion day, brought a couple of J/70s and sailed them in Marblehead. I was maybe the second or third to buy a boat. My wife and daughters loved it. It wasn’t a hard sell, the boat sold itself.’
Smith’s first J/70 Worlds was 2014 in Newport, where his boat Africa finished a respectable ninth. ‘We never did a lot of training back then,’ he recalls. ‘Our idea of training was to show up the day before a regatta. Willem’s team, guys like that, would put in days
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