In a world where sailcloth innovations are often either overhyped or under-delivered, Dimension-Polyant’s Tyra PLY has managed something far rarer—quiet credibility.
Launched with little fanfare, the next-gen laminate has spent its first season proving itself the hard way: offshore, inshore, and flogging itself half to death on test rigs and raceboats alike.
And now? It’s getting a serious upgrade.
For those not familiar with the fine art of rolled goods and high-modulus fibre alignment (and who can blame you?), Tyra PLY is the middle ground between the affordability of traditional woven sails and the space-age performance of custom membrane builds. Think lighter, stronger, thinner, and crucially—tough as old boots.
What makes Tyra PLY particularly interesting is the modular engineering—UD tapes of fancy filament fibres, arranged precisely where the loads run, thermoplastically bonded into a flat, bulletproof fabric. Add some abrasion-resistant taffeta if you’re feeling fancy, and voilà: a sailcloth that behaves like a custom job but is priced like a bolt of cloth.
For 2025, Dimension-Polyant is taking things up a gear with the introduction of Thermoset adhesive systems, replacing the original thermoplastic glue with a more stable, pliable, and forgiving bonding matrix. Why? Because while strength and stretch resistance are lovely things on paper, pliability—what the old-school sailmakers call “hand”—still matters.
A sail that’s stiff as a board might look fast, but it’s hell to furl, stuff, or flake. Especially in short-handed racing, where every fold, flog, and furled wrap matters. Thermoset Tyra PLY gives you high-end durability with a soft touch, and the test results are impressive: minimal strength loss after repeated flapping, battering, and abuse.
“There are no off-the-shelf solutions for what we’re doing,” says Uwe Stein, CEO at Dimension-Polyant. “The adhesives had to be engineered from scratch to bond Ultra-PE and other tricky substrates in a way that holds up offshore.”
And yes, they’re putting their cloth where their mouth is. Class40 #93, co-skippered by Lisa Berger and Jade Edwards-Leaney, will be racing around the world in the Globe 40 with Tyra PLY Thermoset sails onboard—30,000+ miles of tradewinds, Southern Ocean chaos, and sail flogging across six legs and eight months.
Lisa, a Mini Transat veteran, is aiming this campaign squarely at the 2027 Global Solo Challenge. But first, she and Jade will take Tyra PLY on a global beatdown that even the most robust sailcloth wouldn’t volunteer for. If the new material can make it around the Great Capes with fibres still holding hands, Dimension-Polyant may just have created a genuine game-changer.
From what we've seen so far, Tyra PLY Thermoset isn’t just another tweak in the cloth war—it’s a serious contender. Built smart, tested hard, and now backed by a global lap of punishment, it’s looking like one of the most compelling evolutions in sailmaking since the first threadline hit the plotter.
Watch this space. Or better yet—watch that Class40.
I check-in with Tudor Team Alinghi’s director for technical and sailing, New Zealand America’s Cup veteran Dave Endean – the man in charge of making sure that in AC38 the Swiss syndicate improves on its somewhat lacklustre performance in the last Cup in Barcelona.
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