10 questions with… Brenan Hutchings

brenan hutchings

In the next edition of ’10 questions with…’ we introduce you to Brenan Hutchings!

What is your position at Southern Spars:

I’m up in the design office and I head the Boom engineering team.

How long have you been sailing?

I’ve been into boats and sailing for as long as I can remember!

Have you been involved with other performance sports in the past?

Yeah, I was a competitive rower at one point.

What’s your claim to fame? (sailing or otherwise)

I won gold at Maadi in the coxed quad sculls (Rowing) back in the day.

What the last yacht you sailed on: 

I went out for some sail testing on the 85m ketch Aquijo last week.

What’s your most memorable sailing experience:

Oh man, let’s just say I can sympathise with Alex Thompson and what happened to him in the closing stages of his Route De Rhum race. I did something similar while I was sailing solo except my ride home was by helicopter!

What projects have you completed at SSNZ recently?

I designed the new Bella Mente& Momo IRC72 boom & all of the new booms for the 2018 TP52 fleet. Have done a few very large super yacht booms recently also.

What has been your most satisfying project at SSNZ and why?

No particular project as such, but when we develop something new or different and it works really well I get a kick from that. 

Why should an owner choose to rig with Southern Spars?

I genuinely believe that we are more thorough in our design process than any other spar maker, which gives us a more refined product and ultimately a safer and more reliable rig package for the owner. But also for the top end race boats, we can push the boundaries a lot harder because we have confidence in our design numbers.

What’s there to look forward to in 2019:

I’m off the hook with the AC75’s because they don’t have a boom as such, but we have some very large super yacht projects coming through the factory so I’ve got a lot of big booms to design!

Bonus Question:

What is the most highly loaded component you’ve designed at Southern Spars?

The boom vangs see the most load of any component I deal with. A typical 50m superyacht would easily see around 30,000kg working load on the becket, but the largest ones we’ve designed and built were operating at over 70,000kg normal working load.

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