By Ivor Wilkins for Doyle Sails x Seahorse Magazine March 2026
Doyle Sails has been a key supplier to the SailGP circuit since its inception. With the award of a new five-year contract, the success story continues
With SailGP firmly implanted and continuing to expand as international sailing’s premier continuous professional racing league, Doyle Sails celebrated the end of the 2025 season with confirmation of its first five-year contract through to 2030.
“We have been with SailGP from the beginning in 2019, but up to now our contract has been up for renewal every couple of years,” says Doyle Sails President Mike Sanderson. “It is a relationship we value greatly, and we have been delighted to see the circuit go from strength to strength. We love being part of the team.”
Doyle Sails’ most visible involvement is supplying the six jibs every team has in its inventory. However, the Doyle Sails role extends to assisting with the modelling and analysis for the entire aero package, including the multi-element hard wings.
With a weather-dependent stadium sport packed with 20,000 or more paying spectators, there is huge pressure for the show to go on – which means SailGP has worked constantly to expand the operating wind range at both the upper and lower ends of the spectrum.
The inventory now includes six jibs per team and three hard wing configurations:
– AP 1 & 2 – All Purpose, for use with the 24m wing
– HW 1 & 2 – Heavy Weather, used with the 18m wing
– LA 1 & 2 – Light Air, for use with the 27.5m and 29m wings
“We are very conscious that SailGP is a high-stakes professional sport,” says Sanderson. “For the fans and the teams, the last thing anybody wants is to lose a race through gear failure.
“These sails see very high loads, so our main priorities have been to produce sails that perform to a very high level – it is a grand prix circuit, after all. But they also need to be reliable, durable and well maintained.
“At every event, there is a notice board where the teams are kept informed about any equipment issues, or failures. Our goal is never to feature on that notice board and, so far, we have managed to stay out of that conversation.
“In some senses, you might argue that if we’re not having failures, we are not pushing quite hard enough, but it is a very fine line.
“Another very important aspect in a one-design fleet is that the sails are performing equally and that they are built to exactly the same level of accuracy across the fleet.
“All the data is shared between the teams, so in that sense there is nowhere to hide. You can be sure that these guys are always on the lookout for any discrepancies. Most of them come out of one-design fleets, like 49ers, and probably the most talked about topic is whether all the equipment is truly identical.
“If any of them feel they are at the slightest disadvantage, you will hear all about it. Our sails are built to extremely fine tolerances, just millimetres over the entire area of the sail – about the thickness of a pen, and we are always trying to get to a thinner pen.”
SailGP co-founder and CEO Sir Russell Coutts agrees that all those criteria are important elements in the trust that has developed to the point where the league has the confidence to award a long-term contract going forward.
“But I would also add that Doyle Sails have done a magnificent job of servicing the league since we started,” he adds. “When you are running a high number of events over a season with that many teams competing, you need to know that the servicing and delivery levels are really up to par and beyond.
“Doyle Sails have also played a key role in working with us on analysing the rig loads, understanding the impacts of twist in the wings, the aerodynamics and all the forces involved. That has been really important to us as well.”
These key design and analytical roles are primarily driven by Doyle Sails Design Director, Richard Bouzaid, whose long-standing sailing relationship with Russell Coutts includes trimming aboard the successful Alinghi America’s Cup campaign in 2003.
Given the size disparity between the towering wings and the jibs, fans watching on might be excused for imagining the headsails are only bit-players in the drama. However, Coutts and Sanderson both emphasise the crucial role the jibs play, particularly in the critical transition from displacement mode to foiling.
“They may be relatively small, but they carry a big workload,” says Sanderson. “They have to go through significant depth ranges as they deliver maximum power to help propel the boats up onto the foils. Then the trimmers are doing everything they can to flatten them to reduce drag. So a lot of the design and high-carbon structural emphasis is focused on adjustability and reliability.
“These sails work harder and harder every season,” he continues, “with more events every year and more teams coming on board. The pressure on durability and reliability just increases all the time.”
Accordingly, SailGP and Doyle Sails co-ordinate closely on maintenance and replacement strategies, to ensure consistent performance is sustained from season to season.
In what is a highly commercialised environment, the sailplans also serve as advertising billboards for the team and event sponsors. “In this respect, Doyle Sails have a really good graphics system, so the brand images and logos look and remain really sharp. They stand out brilliantly on the broadcasts and in the live arenas,” Coutts notes.
“This is fundamental to SailGP, where all the teams have commercial partners and responsibilities to them.”
The graphics are achieved by Doyle Sails’ propriety SailArt system, which involves printing the images directly onto the surfaces of the sail utilising sustainable, non-toxic inks. During the manufacturing process, the nested layers of material including the graphics are cured under heat and pressure.
The result is photo quality images with extremely sharp detailing embedded within the structure of the sail.
Not only do the sails look better, but – compared with conventional systems of painted imagery – they perform better as well. SailArt graphics add only 7 grams of weight for every square metre applied, compared with about 35 gm/m2 with conventional systems.
Top sailors tend to view sails through a narrow performance lens – assessing how shape, design and structure transform airflow into maximum driving force. When Sanderson allows his attention to shift from that innate speed and efficiency analysis, he confesses he likes what he sees.
“First and foremost, the sails definitely need to fully justify their grand prix racing credentials,” he says, “but the high definition of the graphics does stand out well in the TV footage. We are very proud of how they look.”
When Coutts and Oracle software billionaire Larry Ellison joined forces to establish SailGP following the 2017 America’s Cup campaign in Bermuda, there was strong competition between the major sailmaking brands to secure the supply contract.
Despite having no involvement with any of the teams that competed at Bermuda with the AC50 catamarans that were subsequently adopted by SailGP, Doyle Sails secured the deal. When the contract came up for renewal in 2021, Doyle Sails once again succeeded over strong competition.
After a comprehensive selection process, Coutts said at the time that he had “no hesitation” in renewing the arrangement, noting: “We knew they had the expertise, technology and commitment to deliver on such a project.
“We also knew that success would be just as important for them as it was for us. The result was that the teams were unanimous in the praise of the quality and service that Doyle delivers.”
Commenting on the vote of confidence back then, Sanderson said he was proud of the partnership with SailGP and the world class sailors involved.
Grand prix level involves top professional sailors racing at the physical boundaries of the sport, demanding extreme accuracy, split-second calculations and technical excellence.
“That is the kind of company we like to keep and the qualities we demand of ourselves,” says Sanderson. “We may not be the biggest sailmakers, but we have brought some of the best sailors in the world onto our team with a shared determination to provide custom sails of the highest quality in terms of design, materials and construction.
“When we first got involved with SailGP, we knew that if we mucked up, we would not survive. The stakes were high and we respected that.”
With the relationship now extended to a five-year commitment, Sanderson appreciates the validation, but says fundamentally nothing changes. “We definitely know we cannot relax for a second.
“These contracts are complex and time-consuming, so in a way it is nice to know we don’t have to go through that quite as often as before. It means we can devote all our attention to continuing to develop and improve our products and service.
“But, the pressure stays the same. We still know that if we muck up, we won’t survive. The stakes only get higher.”
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ABOUT DOYLE SAILS // Doyle Sails strives to deliver success through high-performance, high-quality, custom sails that continue to redefine the boundaries of sailmaking technology and innovation; whilst connecting sailors to inspire, support and encourage sailing.
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