hemisphere summer. Somewhat to his own surprise,
he even finds himself excited about starting the summer programme by competing in the revitalised Admiral’s Cup in a 42-footer. ‘The last Fastnet Race I did was about 10 years ago with the Maxi 72 Bella Mente,’ he laughs. ‘The smallest boat I ever sailed in the Fastnet was a Whitbread 60, so this one is going to be interesting.’ The two New Zealand Admiral’s
Cup boats are Max Klink’s polished Botin 52, Caro, and James Murray’s Callisto, which started life as a GP42 before being extensively modified and campaigned by Peter Morton as a Fast 40. Under the current ownership, the yacht has been through another major refit with new appendages, including twin rudders, a new rig and a full wardrobe of Doyle Sails. ‘We used a lot of the R&D data
from Bella Mente and we are pretty excited about where the boat has landed,’ says Sanderson. ‘We are going to be up against a couple of new boats, so the question is whether we have used our age allowance well enough to get ahead of the curve.’ Towards the end of April, he was
to joinMurray and the crew, which includes Dean Barker, James Dagg, Jared Henderson, Ben Childerley and navigator IanMoore, for a shake down and training session in Valencia, followed by another practice session at Cowes a week later. In a more material sense, the
NTG involvement has already paid dividends for Doyle Sails. At the time the deal was struck, NTG CEO Sam Watson confirmed that the Group was committed to injecting capital into Doyle Sails. ‘Mike and the team have brought
some ideas to us that we are super- enthusiastic about,’ Watson says. ‘Consequently, we have already made additional investments in the business and, absolutely, we will keep doing that.’ At the beginning of April, Doyle
Sails took delivery of new machinery which will bring robotic automation to the manufacture of their Grand
Above and right: the TP52 fleet has been quick to adopt Doyle Sails’ latest Hybrid fabric and many of the 52s at last year’s Tre Golfi regatta were already using it
Prix Elite Hybrid product. ‘Up to now, the production of Hybrid has been very labour-intensive for us and that obviously comes at an efficiency cost,’ says Sanderson. ‘Hybrid has been going very well
for us,’ he confirms. ‘The upwind sails on our Admiral’s Cup boats and also on the Australian boats are all Hybrid. It is proving popular on the TP52s and Maxi 72s as well. Bella Mente, Cannonball and Proteus are all 100 per cent Hybrid for their key working sails and right now we have a new Hybrid mainsail in production for Galateia, a J1 for Leopard 3 and some new sails for Bullitt.” Sanderson says Hybrid is still
going through a steep development curve. ‘The fundamental concept is unchanged, but we have come a long way with it in the past three years. The Hybrid product we have this year is a nice gain on what we had in 2022.’ NTG’s investment in the Hybrid
robotic systemrepresents a big financial relief for the previous Doyle Sails owners. ‘We would have had to extend themortgages on our houses tomake that kind of investment before,’ says Sanderson. ‘We actually did that numerous times over the past 15 years, so it is very nice not to have to do it on this occasion.’ Reflecting on the first year of the
NTG association, Sanderson says it has provided a lot of positives for Doyle Sails. ‘We have had to grow up as an organisation, from an accountability and governance standpoint. In this phase of the company’s size, that is definitely a good thing. It would not have been a good thing for the previous 10 years, when we were pushing hard to grow the company and to expand our market share.’ During that growth period, it was necessary for Doyle Sails to be quick on its feet and quite aggressive. ‘We had to be very brave during that phase,’ Sanderson says. ‘Outsiders looking in and seeing how leveraged we were and how we gambled on big
leaps in product design and development probably felt we were a little bold, semi-reckless even. ‘But we believed in what we were
doing and always followed the maxim that “fortune favours the brave”. Now it is a good time for Doyle Sails to adopt a more mature and responsible approach and NTG has definitely brought that.’ While the NTG deal was being
negotiated, Sanderson leaned heavily on GrahamClarke, who had recently sold his own company to a private equity group and was able to provide invaluable advice and experience. That role has since formalised to
a point where Clarke handles much of the business side to capitalise on the synergies, centralised banking and management systems, logistics and procurement scale that a big conglomerate offers. He reports to Sanderson and to NTG. ‘That brings big benefits from
a management point of view and allows us to keep the DNA-specific sailmaking and performance aspects of Doyle Sails totally self- contained,’ Sanderson explains. A big part of the Doyle Sails
appeal lies in the feisty David vs Goliath fight it has waged to gain respect and market share. When the NTG deal was signed and Doyle Sails was able to share the news with its key clients, Sanderson was relieved at their reaction. ‘Every one of them was very
understanding. There was not a single criticism of what we had done,’ he says. ‘I think there was an appreciation of how much our three families had put on the line over the years to make this work. ‘That customer support is a huge
motivation for us to keep pushing every aspect of our operation and to keep fighting their corner hard to make sure we do the right thing by them with bespoke, personal attention and always exploring the boundaries of design and leading- edge technology.’
www.doylesails.com
❑ SEAHORSE 65
STUDIO BORLENGHI
STUDIO BORLENGHI
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