Ben McGrane's inside track on the sailing scene

by Mark Jardine 7 Sep 01:00 NZST

One of Britain's great dinghy sailors, who keeps his finger on the pulse of many of the UK's big classes, is Hyde Sails' Ben McGrane.

From high-performance dinghies to Mirrors and XODs, his range and experience is vast, so it's always good to catch up with him to find out what is happening in the racing scene.

Mark Jardine: Ben, you're just back from the Mirror National Championships at Itchenor, where you were sailing with your youngest daughter this this year. It looks like a well-attended event, being in the '50+ club' for attendance. How was it?

Ben McGrane: The Mirror has seemingly found its place as a very popular parent-with-child class. Itchenor is still one of the strongest clubs for the Mirror, so hosting the Nationals there gave it that extra boost to get from a 40-boat turnout to a 50-boat turnout. It was a really good event. There were lots of familiar faces in terms of people I have raced over the years. The class continues to attract more people in, and I think it's still growing.

Mark: We talked about it last year and it's very much been led by this parent-and-child sailing, which is then leading into different pairings of youths sailing together, and other ways that you can put a crew together. How important do you think that is?

Ben: I think it's a good grounding. If I look at my older daughter now, who is 10, (we did three years together in the Mirror, and she's now sailing with her mum) she's a really solid little crew. She's got all of those basics of boat handling and sail trimming and does a really good job around the boat.

With Keira now she highlights what she learned, or will say something like, "we're splitting from the fleet", it makes you realise she has built up a really solid amount of fleet racing knowledge and understanding. There are all these little snippets of information that you say but you don't necessarily realise that they're registering, but it's all going in there! I think probably, as they get older, that it'll become more and more clear what we were talking about and how much is transferable just by being in a boat with others with more experience.

I think it's a pathway that maybe isn't necessarily recognised. I look at Keira now, and she could go off and do single-handed sailing, or if she wanted to go and get a Feva and crew with another kid, or even with the Mirror, you can see in a few years she'd be ready to do that. So I think it's a really fun way of doing some sailing.

Mark: Fantastic! And from a Hyde Sails point of view, you've had Mirror success in the UK and also in Australia?

Ben: Yes, certainly part of my focus has been to expand our OD sails Internationally, particularly in the last 12 months with our dealers. We have a well-established international dealer network, and although that is extensively based around the yacht sails, a lot of these dealers have local dinghy fleets, and we're making them more aware of the fleets that we're working with or identifying opportunities to work with new classes in conjunction with a dealer local to the fleet. This has been very successful with our Mirror, 505, Optimist and Fireball products.

We are working to make Hyde products more readily available around the world, and one of the key countries where you can see that starting to come together is Australia. We started supplying Mirror sails into Australia, and our sails won the Nationals out there this year. It's great to see and it's all heading in the right direction. This will continue to be important for us running in this winter and 2025, with plenty of projects in the pipeline in Australia, North America, Canada and Europe.

Mark: Success for the class on both sides of the planet! Going back to Chichester Harbour, where you were racing in the Mirrors, there are events like Chichester Harbour Week, and also the Bosham Regatta. We've had Poole Week and many other club events appear to be seeing massive turnouts. Is this what you're seeing on the ground?

Ben: I've been following them this summer and in recent years. I think it is something that really saw a resurgence after the Covid period where travel was restricted, but then it re-highlighted to everybody how great these events can be on your doorstep, how easy they are and cost effective.

Particularly where there are strong local fleets such as Poole Week, Fed Week and Chichester Harbour, Burnham Week with Dragons, Squibs and RS Elites, all well-established classes locally. Those weeks seem to be a way of getting everyone out on the water at the same time. It becomes kind of a pinnacle event in the calendar.

Even within that you can see other growth. If you take Poole Week, for example, there's a strong XOD fleet, and that's now attracting travelling boats as well. I have a feeling that over the next few years, this is an area of our sport that's going to continue to grow. It is great to see.

Mark: Talking of the XODs - and also the Flying Fifteens, which are a big fleet in Poole - let's consider Cowes Week. While the numbers are relatively down, and it is expensive to get to, the quality of the racing, and also the race management, seems to have taken a real turn for the good lately. Is that what you found in the XODs there this year?

Ben: I thought Cowes was brilliant this year, and probably the best Cowes Week I've done in quite a while. I think it obviously helps when you do a regatta in the UK and the sun shines, but we had great weather and some really good sea breezes. I think that also went hand-in-hand with how the race management team was trying a lot harder to make sure that the racing was the best it could be and also communicating that with the sailors. So, sailors were accepting of postponements as the race team were trying to run the racing in the best wind of the day.

Beyond that, there were little things I hadn't seen before, like the order of classes starting. The XODs are always last in the start sequence on the Squadron line. So, if you have postponements or lots of general recalls and everything else is delayed, the XOD racing is always a bit threatened by that, because there is a rule that says the race is to finish by 6pm. One day we had a short race, which I think was about an hour and a quarter, but at the same time, they shortened that race (and rightly so, because the wind was disappearing). They did everything right with that race, given the constraints of the regatta, but then the team took a step back and decided to bump us forward two hours in the start sequence the next day, to try and to make sure we got a long race. It wasn't so fixed in stone. There was a lot more moving things around to make it as good as they could make it for everybody. I thought that was a real positive.

Mark: I've heard from a lot of Cowes Week competitors that it was the most reactive race management that they'd ever seen, and resulted in superb quality of racing. Hopefully this will see a real revival in Cowes Week itself.

Ben: Yes! I think there's still areas that they've got to get better. Other things that we all commented on was that there are a lot of good places to eat out in Cowes now. You didn't feel like you were spending silly amounts of money to go and have dinner. Talking to the younger people, there's still a fairly good social scene going on for those that want to party into the early hours. I think it's still a regatta that offers something for everyone.

Accommodation costs are still high, and I think that's probably the biggest barrier. I think there's still quite a lot of talk about whether the event is too long. I think the regatta need to continue evolving, but I think this year was the beginning of seeing that happening. I came away from it feeling really positive; I had a great week.

Mark: The XOD and Cowes Week has been a focus of yours for a number of years now, what is it that keeps you coming back?

Ben: Certainly, for me I think the racing is very different than the dinghy racing I normally do, the main event being Cowes is large courses in a relatively slow boat so there is a lot to think about, plenty of gain features and long-term planning when the beats are 4nm in the Solent. The turnouts are lower than in the past, but slowly coming back, and the competition is only getting stronger. I think it offers a fairly unique challenge that you have to learn over a number of years and, even then, considering it's the same venue every year there are a whole host of different race areas, courses and conditions to keep you guessing.

Mark: The results have been impressive in a short period of time, how has this been achieved?

Ben: Hyde Sails have been involved with the class for many years, with Stuart and Ado Jardine of course, and Simon Russell. Coming back into the class allowed us to review and quite quickly introduce new shape designs combining the internal knowledge already within Hyde Sails of the class with the next generation of sail design software and my views on how the sails could be improved.

We were able to get the designs in a great place within the first season to then go on to win Cowes Classics and Cowes Week in 2022. Since then it has been small refinements and the results have continued to be great including 3rd at Itchenor Keelboat Week, 2nd in Cowes Classics and 2nd at Cowes Week this year.

We've made a big step forwards this year in terms of the number of boats making the switch to Hyde which I hope we can continue to build on next year alongside the introduction of a new jib design.

Mark: I understand the class are looking at a new shape spinnaker which will hopefully be adopted by the class. Hyde and the other sailmakers have been working to help test this proposal. This new spinnaker will actually make the boat easiest to sail throughout the fleet. Do you think there's a misconception in the class, though, that the changes are to benefit the top end, rather than the entire fleet?

Ben: I think the XOD Class Association have done a really good job of coming up with a system of allowing everyone to see what the new spinnaker proposal is all about. We at Hyde, and all other class sailmakers, have made a spinnaker to a rule that has been proposed. Those spinnakers are all now out there being used, which I think is a real positive in terms of allowing everyone to get a better understanding of what the spinnaker is supposed to do.

It isn't about performance, because the reality is that making the spinnaker slightly bigger on an XOD isn't going to make the boat go any faster. Having raced with a new shape spinnaker down in Lymington, I think we came third in that race; you didn't find that you just sailed past everybody downwind because you had a slightly bigger spinnaker. I don't think it's going to necessarily force everyone into this. They don't have to go and buy a new sail straight away, which is obviously always a barrier.

Fundamentally this whole rule change is about creating a spinnaker that's actually nicer to use, so you can trim it properly because it curls rather than collapses, and it's a lot more user-friendly. When reaching it's much easier to see the front edge of the spinnaker. There are lots of positives with it best understood by using one on the water.

Hopefully by the time we get to the AGM and the vote in November, everyone is going to have had the opportunity to have sail with one and will have an understanding of how much nicer it could be for them to sail with the new proposed rule, rather than what they were using before. We'll see how it goes. More than anything, I think it's been handled really well by the class.

Mark: Moving on to the Flying Fifteens, which are continuing to build towards a huge year, especially in the UK with the World Championship: it is a class that is seeing great attendance, with a lot of club racing going on as well, and the major events - the Southerns, the Nationals, the Inlands - have had great turnouts and Hyde Sails are doing exceptionally well.

Ben: They are another of those classes that seem to be going from strength to strength. It helps that there's a build-up of momentum with the Worlds in Weymouth next year. I keep seeing certain names popping up on results sheets, in events maybe slightly off the radar, which suggests that there's a few extra people looking at making a jump into the class with a last-minute qualification at the pre-worlds which is an option to gain a berth to compete.

We've attended three events this year. We did the Southerns, which saw 56 boats down in Poole, which was great. It was tricky racing, with the wind blowing off the land, but we won that, and came third at the Nationals, which was in Strangford Lough -- somewhere completely different and a really challenging venue, but again, absolutely brilliant. It attracted a slightly different group of boats with the Irish contingent, but also more of the northern side of the fleet. The Inlands were held in a really good central location at Grafham and we had another 45 boats there I think.

All these World Qualification events are getting 40, 50 or 60 boats out sailing. The racing's close, and it's really nice to get the results we have, following on from having won the Nationals last year, and we're currently at the top of the UK World Qualification series. So, I'm really happy with that.

The sails we're using this year have been development sails that we've been working on the last 12 months; we're working to move what we had previously into the next evolution. There were clear objective with the new sails: better downwind speed and better speed in light conditions. We've hit all of those targets and got a better all-round package now than we had 12 months ago that I also think is more user friendly to trim.

Mark: As we move into September, what are your plans for the rest of the year?

Ben: The Osprey Nationals are soon, so that'll be good. That's down at Poole Yacht Club where I've never been, though I've raced plenty of times from Parkstone, so that'll be nice to go somewhere different. The Osprey attracted 50 boats at the Nationals last year and I'm expecting a similar turnout again this year. It sounds like there's going to be a good mix of some racing out in the bay and some racing in the harbour.

Then I'll be heading to the Squib Inlands in October, there's potentially a Mirror Inlands to get to, so there's still some racing to be done. Maybe a bit of XOD racing before the end of the season.

Mark: In the Ospreys, if I remember rightly, you were second last year, are you hoping to go one better?

Ben: We'll do our best! Last year we did better than we expected the first time out. We've done quite a lot of work on the sails last winter, off the back of that, so I'm fairly confident that we've progressed on that side of things. We've had a bit more time sailing the boat, in and around everything else. There are a few good teams, and hopefully we'll be somewhere in the mix and see what happens.

Mark: Ben, it's fantastic to get your insight on the developments at Hyde Sails and what's happening in the wider sailing world, so many thanks indeed for your time.

Find out more about Hyde Sails at www.hydesails.com