Technology
Making it personal
Thirty years of racking up ocean racing titles plus high-level engineering expertise gave Stu Bannatyne the perfect grounding to help create and refine two of the most important sailing innovations of the current era
Since 2016, Stu Bannatyne has been part of Doyle Sails International’s line- up of sailing superstars who bring their experience and expertise to clients’ projects, first in analysing their sail inventories and identifying areas for improvement and then in helping their crews get the best out of them to post good results on the leaderboard. In a pro career spanning nearly 30 years, Bannatyne logged hundreds of thousands of miles of grand prix ocean racing and earned a reputation as one of the best in the business. King of the Southern Ocean is one of the tags attached to the unflappable giant as a mark of respect for his ability to drive boats hard in high winds and big following seas. He has competed in eight round- the-world races and won four. 14 Sydney-Hobarts, nine Fastnets and eight Transpacs are just some of the events on his resumé that have made him one of the most sought- after ocean racers in the world. One recent campaign was with the
Pac52, Warrior Won, which swept the top prizes at the 2021 Transpac. Bannatyne had been involved with the boat under its previous owner and continued when Chris Sheehan took it over. For the 2225-mile Transpac Bannatyne was tactician and watch leader, complementing a longer-term onshore role managing the rating optimisation for multiple
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rules, helping with schedule management and constantly pushing development of the sail programme. Warrior Won, launched in 2017, gained significant benefit from Doyle’s Structured Luff and Cableless sails, without requiring any modifications to accommodate the new technology. ‘As is typical with these slightly older designs, the maximum allowable loads on the rig and structures are less than ideal and less than more recent 52 designs,’ Bannatyne explains. ‘But with our technology, we are able to use the existing load limitations and achieve a much greater performance than was possible with the old sail designs.’ Describing his role within the team, Bannatyne says: ‘I bring ideas into the mix on sail inventory concepts and then work as liaison between the Warrior Won team and the Doyle design team to ensure that the sails we receive on the boat are just what we need to optimise the inventory for each race and rating system. ‘We do this early to allow optimal design and build time, but most importantly to allow enough testing time to verify the performance of the sails and where they fit into the crossover chart. The job is never complete, but we endeavour to start each race with high confidence in our crossovers and polars, which really helps in managing the sail changes
Above: as a Doyle Sails grand prix project rep, Stu Bannatyne played a key role in devel- oping and optimising the sail
wardrobe for the Infiniti 46 DSS foiler Maverick, which was an early adopter of Doyle Sails’ game-chang- ing Cableless and Struct- ured Luff technology
and choices we make in each race.’ With his affable and slow-talking demeanour and vast experience, he also brings a highly valued sense of calm on board when the going gets tough. Growing up in New Zealand, Bannatyne followed the traditional sailing route up through the dinghy classes and won the world youth title in Lasers before graduating into Finns. His first taste of ocean racing came in 1993 when Grant Dalton gave him a try-out in the Fastnet Race during the lead-up to his New Zealand Endeavour Whitbread Round the World race campaign. ‘He came to our attention as he had been doing well in Lasers so we gave him a shot in the Fastnet to see how he went,’ Dalton recalls.
Kevin Shoebridge, Dalton’s long- time lieutenant, took the youngster aside and gave him some advice, finishing with a cautionary note not to get drunk in the after-match celebrations and make an idiot of himself. Sure enough, New Zealand Endeavour won the Fastnet and in the dockside eruption that followed Bannatyne partied so hard he fell overboard. Dalton and Shoebridge looked at each other
and agreed, ‘He’s perfect. He’s in.’ Bannatyne chuckles at the memory and recalls it was a breezy Fastnet. It was his first experience of big boat racing, in fact his first time
HANNAH COTTEREL MEDIA
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