Meet the Team Behind Youngbarnacles
Youngbarnacles is our mission to demystify marine composites and modern boat building. Through our YouTube channel and membership site, we share real-world, professional knowledge from decades in the industry. No jargon, no fluff—just the practical skills you need to build, repair, and sail with confidence.
It all revolves around our project to transform a vintage catamaran into a modern performance cruiser. But this journey is powered by a lifetime of professional experience.
Our 25+ Years in the Marine Industry
The Youngbarnacles channel is built on a foundation of professional design, engineering, and sailing success. Here’s a bit of our background…
Shayne and Anna are an Australian/New Zealand couple who have worked in the marine industry for the last 25+ years. Shayne has been involved in the marine composites industry since the late 1990s when he built a very special 8m Dibley designed sports boat called Out of the Blue. After this, he began specialising in carbon fiber mast construction and then moved into design and composite research and development. He has since worked on many different marine design and construction projects including 2 Volvo Ocean Race campaigns and an America’s Cup Challenger campaign. Shayne’s particular area of interest lies in foil design. Along with his various rudder designs for Paikea, Shayne has designed rudders for clients including creating a rudder for Liz Wardley’s solo row across the Atlantic Ocean. Liz broke the record by 15 days! You can check out more of Shayne’s design work on our SYAS Performance design website. Shayne is also an accomplished sailor who has competed 18ft skiff JJ Giltinan Championships placing in the top 3 for several years running. He also has competed in several offshore events including the Cairns to Papua New Guinea and Auckland to Fiji Race both on large multihulls. His participation on an Orma 60 from New Zealand to Fiji saw the team smash the previous record, which has yet to be beaten. He also helps out the lads at Gunboat when they need some help with deliveries😉 We filmed a few of them for you so make sure you check them out here Large Performance Multihull Sailing
Anna’s career in the marine industry started in the late 1990s when she assisted Shayne with the build of Out of the Blue, a Kevin Dibley designed 8m sports boat. After deciding that the marine industry was way more fun than her corporate office job, she joined the team at Southern Rigging (now RigPro) in New Zealand, then moved into a career in sailmaking with NorthSails NZ. Anna often works alongside Shayne on various projects ranging from boat building and rigging to yacht service and sailmaking. She has been involved in a Volvo Ocean Campaign, and more recently working as a sailmaker for local racing teams. Anna loves her sailing and has competed at many local and international events, sailing in a wide range of sailing yachts ranging from the 12ft skiffs to racing larger vessels such as the Volvo 60 and Atlantic 72 in events such as Auckland’s Coastal Classic events and Antigua Sailing Week.
Why We Started Youngbarnacles
After working at the highest levels of the marine industry, we wanted to create a resource we wished we’d had coming up: a practical, accessible, and comprehensive library of knowledge for anyone passionate about composites and performance sailing.
Youngbarnacles is that project. It’s where we apply our professional expertise to our own personal project, sharing every step of the process. We’re combining our love for teaching with our hands-on skills, building a community of learners along the way.
Our Professional Design Consultancy: SYAS Performance
While Youngbarnacles is our public educational platform, our professional work continues through SYAS Performance, our marine design and engineering consultancy.
SYAS is where we take on advanced projects for clients, specializing in:
- Hydrofoil and appendage design: Using CFD analysis for optimal performance.
- Composite engineering and structural analysis: Designing lightweight, strong structures built for purpose.
- Vessel Design for Alternative Propulsion: We design efficient, lightweight hulls and systems specifically optimized to house electric and hybrid propulsion systems, maximizing their range and effectiveness.
- Owner’s representation and technical oversight: Acting as your independent expert for new builds and refits.
Learn More About Our Professional Services
Meet Paikea
Since her purchase in 2018, Shayne and Anna have made major structural modifications to the front beam, added a carbon fibre longeron along with the installation of a carbon fiber spreader-less rotating rig. You can check out Paikea’s modifications here on our website and on our YouTube channel.
Paikea (originally named “Andromede”) is a 42ft Catana catamaran. The boat was built in the early days of Catana yard’s boat building career. The 42ft was a reincarnation of Lock Crowther’s successful 40ft designed hull. The original hull molds (now no longer in existence) were extended another 2ft to create the new Catana42s. The “s” indicating that this design had 6 cabins.
A bit of Catana History
In 1984, the Catana shipyard is founded in Cogolin in the Var region of France. The first cruising catamarans built here were well ahead of their time. Their architect was a well-known Australian designer Lock Crowther. Among his most notable designs were the Buccaneer & Kraken series trimarans, Spindrift 45 & Catana 40 cats, as well as a great number of other cruising, racing, charter/commercial and power cats and tris.
Lock Crowther built his first boat, a trimaran called BUNYIP, in 1959 while still a teenager. The following year he raced in the Easter regatta at Paynesville, Victoria, Australia, beating 300 boats to the finish. The success of his boat inspired several of his friends to build similar boats and thus Lock Crowther’s design career started, though he did not expect to make a living out of it, and studied electrical engineering. In the early 1960s, when there were only a handful of people designing multihulls, Lock Crowther was involved in this international scene and also a member of the Amateur Yacht Research Society. BUNYIP was followed by the Kraken 25 design, which somewhat widened Crowther’s recognition.
His reputation was established internationally in 1966, when his first offshore racing trimaran BRANDERSNACH won the Sydney to Hobart multihull race. Even more notice was taken in 1969, when a Kraken 40 won the New York to Bermuda race with him aboard. During Lock Crowther’s career, more than 2500 of his designs were built. He started out with racing boats, where most of his new ideas were developed, though he was successful drawing cruising and commercial craft as well. Among his outstanding designs was the trimaran SPIRIT OF AMERICA, which was an early user of GRP-foam sandwich construction and had innovative composite beams with uni-directional fibres and turned-down ends. Lock Crowther also developed the use of ‘bulbous bows’ as a measure to reduce pitching, and hence increase speed when sailing upwind in a swell. Source
Join the Journey
The best way to follow along is on our YouTube channel. For those who want to dive deeper, our membership site offers more opportunities to learn with members only content and videos.