Happy days!
Boxing Day 2018 marked the start of a pretty good story for the latest Doyle Sails technology
The 2018 Rolex Sydney-Hobart race brought together some of the finest offshore sailors on the planet. Four 100ft Maxis raced to Hobart, with two of these plus the overall winner, the Reichel/Pugh 66 Alive, all flying Doyle Stratis sails. This was a key opportunity for multiple world champion, double Olympian and six- time Volvo veteran Chris Nicholson from Doyle Lake Macquarie to gauge the response, from the talent gathered in Hobart, on the innovations and key developments emerging from Doyle in 2018-19. ‘Two of the 100-footers developed a J-Zero, similar to the Volvo 65 sail, and so now we are seeing that information trickle down from the Volvo Ocean Race to mainstream offshore racing, which is great,’ Nicholson said.
‘Normally the J-Zeros are set on a reaching strut, but with the conditions in the recent Hobart, the struts weren’t in range to be used – and still the gains with the luff of the J-Zero projecting so much enabled for a much faster triple head setup. With two inner jibs or staysails flying, the gains have really been impressive.’ ‘Both Comanche and InfoTrack raced with cable-less sails, plus Comanche raced south with a Doyle mainsail. The feedback from the guys on board confirmed that a significant
62 SEAHORSE
weight gain on all the sails, especially the mainsail had been achieved. The extensive design work on all the sails’ elongation numbers was absolutely spot on, confirmed by it all matching the rig setup so well. Comanche also had a cable-less furling J1, J-Zero and A3 – which, to be honest is quite a ground-breaking sail on a furler, making this massive sail highly manageable for the crew. All of this with literally no sag in the luff sideways and flying positively forward from a projection standpoint, for a huge increase in driving force. Then on InfoTrack we had a cable-less masthead Zero, J-Zero, storm jib, J5 and an A2 cable-less Stratis sail, which was bigger again than Comanche’s,’ he adds.
With inshore and offshore teams around the world continuing to focus on reducing weight in all areas of rig, sails and hull structure, the response from Comanche’s owner, Jim Cooney, summarising the improvements in their inventory was extremely positive. ‘The Doyle big jibs and A3 are very powerful and yet significantly lighter than I ever expected, increasing acceleration with our greater righting moment available. The sails’ ability to hold their shape at all angles with virtually no luff sag is astounding in such big sails. We have reduced rig load dramatically with these cable-
Above: the 100ft Maxi Comanche in training prior to the 2018 Sydney Hobart
race, with a new and dauntingly powerful
looking Doyle cable-less Code Zero headsail providing the lion’s share of the horsepower. Significant performance gains were recorded during the race with this new sail, with considerable weight saving across the new wardrobe as a bonus – particularly in the boat’s latest Doyle mainsail
less sails, and our performance has improved in all conditions, particularly in light air. Our new Doyle mainsail is exceptionally high quality and the reduction in permanent weight aloft gives immediate gains in all conditions. Comanche has been able to realise more of her potential with the addition of Doyle’s cable-less sails and I recommend this exciting technology for any size of boat.’ The 2018 Hobart race featured lighter conditions than normal for the front end of the fleet, which saw the big boats match-race each other to the mouth of the Derwent, with just under 15 minutes separating the four Maxis after 628 miles of racing. One of the key performances of the 2018 Hobart race was aboard InfoTrack, with improved light air and VMG running by using their A2 laminate Stratis sail for 95 per cent of the race, performing superbly in a range of true wind speedfrom eight to 32 knots, where it furled easily, proving a highly controllable sail in over 30 knots true. Racing aboard InfoTrack was Stu Bannatyne on his 12th Hobart race, who commented on the set-up.
‘Sailing upwind with the Doyle masthead Zero you could see the luff the whole way, it simply doesn’t shake or flutter at all, it just sits there in a straight line in front of
COMANCHE/KYLE LANGFORD
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