Meet Shayne and Anna
We’re the team behind Youngbarnacles. Shayne came up through the marine industry the hard way — building boats, then masts, then pushing into design and engineering. Anna had an MBA and a career at PwC before she met Shayne, helped build a boat, and decided that was considerably more interesting than corporate consulting. She retrained as a sailmaker and never looked back.
Between us, we have over 50 years of professional experience across composite engineering, foil design, rigging, sailmaking, and offshore racing at the highest levels of the sport. We’ve worked on Volvo Ocean Race campaigns, an America’s Cup challenge, and record-breaking offshore passages — and we’ve spent just as much time in the shed, hands dirty, figuring out what actually works.
Youngbarnacles is what happens when that experience meets a boat we love and a genuine desire to share what we know.
Shayne
Shayne’s path into marine composites wasn’t a straight line. He trained as a diesel fitter, but boats were always his passion — specifically, designing and building them. In the late 1990s he took that ambition seriously and built Out of the Blue, a Kevin Dibley-designed 8m sports boat, from scratch. From there he moved into carbon fibre mast construction at Southern Spars — now RigPro — then spent time at C-Tech designing and manufacturing high tech composite battens, before moving into composite R&D. He ran the research and development lab at High Modulus — now part of Gurit — before pushing further into design and consulting. That progression through the sharp end of the composites industry is the foundation everything at Youngbarnacles is built on.
Over the past 25+ years he’s worked on two Volvo Ocean Race campaigns, an America’s Cup Challenger campaign, and has designed appendages for some seriously quick boats. His rudder design for Liz Wardley’s solo Atlantic row helped her break the record by 15 days. His particular passion is foil design — the intersection of hydrodynamics, materials, and performance where small decisions have large consequences.
He’s also no stranger to the sharp end of the fleet. Shayne has competed in the 18ft Skiff JJ Giltinan Championships, placing in the top 3 multiple times, and has raced offshore on large multihulls including an ORMA 60 passage from New Zealand to Fiji — setting a record that still stands. Away from racing, Shayne is one of the most experienced riggers working on large performance multihulls. He commissioned the first four Gunboat 68 rigs, has worked for Rigging Projects and as an independent rigger, and has delivered and trained crew on numerous high performance multihulls including the Gunboat 68, Gunboat 62, Gunboat 66, HH66, and many others. When these boats need an experienced hand, Shayne is one of the first people they call.
His professional design work continues through SYAS Performance.
Anna
Anna came to the marine industry from an unlikely direction. She had an MBA and was working at PwC when she met Shayne and got pulled into helping build Out of the Blue. One boat was enough — she walked away from corporate consulting, retrained as a sailmaker with NorthSails NZ, and built a career she actually wanted.
She’s worked at Southern Rigging (now RigPro) and built her sailmaking career at NorthSails NZ — where her work spanned multiple Volvo Ocean Race campaigns, America’s Cup sails, J Class sails, and grand prix racing yachts at the highest level of the sport. She was also directly employed on a Volvo Ocean Race campaign, competed at events from local club racing to Antigua Sailing Week, and has sailed everything from 12ft skiffs to Volvo 60s and large performance multihulls. Anna continues to work across the industry — with race teams on sail making, soft covers and repairs and as the second half of Shayne’s rigging team on client boats. Rigging work is rarely a one-person job, and when Shayne is going up a mast or working on a client’s rig, Anna is the person he trusts to get him there and back safely and to work alongside him on the job. Beyond working on boats, racing and and as delivery crew on large performance multihulls, Anna has crewed on a number of extended cruising passages aboard Gunboat 6602 “Outnumbered” — taking owners through Croatia, Spain, and France.
On Paikea, Anna works right alongside Shayne. Currently that means stripping the entire interior lining and doing all the sanding, bogging, and fairing in preparation for paint — unglamorous, physical work that has to be done properly before anything else can happen while Shayne concentrates on building the new composite interior. She also shoots and edits all the YouTube videos, built and manages the website, runs all the content and social media, and keeps the whole operation moving.
The Boys
Our three sons — Ayden, Harry and Olly — have been cruising full time with us since we bought Paikea in 2018. They’ve grown up working on all things boating inlcuding composites, rigging, sailmaking and engines. They are all accomplished sailors in their own right and often assist us with deliveries in a professional capacity as well as helping rebuild Paikea alongside us. Recently, Olly built his own carbon fibre pump foil board using skills learned on Paikea and won the Youth pumpfoil division at Foiling Week, Lake Garda 2026.
Why We Started Youngbarnacles
There’s a lot of content out there about boats. Most of it is lifestyle. Some of it is genuinely wrong — and when it comes to composites or seamanship, wrong information isn’t just frustrating, it can be dangerous.
We started Youngbarnacles because we wanted to put something serious into that space. Not a channel built around views and algorithms, but a genuine technical resource for people who actually want to understand what they’re doing — whether that’s laminating carbon fibre correctly, or making good decisions offshore.
Paikea is our teaching tool. She’s a real boat, with real problems, being solved the way we’d approach any professional project. We’re not staging it for the camera. We’re just showing you how we actually work.
Our Professional Work: SYAS Performance
Alongside Youngbarnacles, we continue to take on professional projects through SYAS Performance — our marine design and engineering consultancy.
SYAS Performance specialises in:
- Hydrofoil and appendage design, using CFD analysis for performance optimisation
- Composite engineering and structural analysis
- Hull and systems design for electric and hybrid propulsion
- Owner’s representation and technical oversight for new builds and refits
If you have a project that needs that level of input, get in touch.
Meet Paikea
Paikea is a 42ft Catana catamaran, built in the early days of the Catana yard using hull molds derived from Lock Crowther’s successful Catana 40 design — extended two feet and fitted with six cabins.
Originally named Andromede she’s been with us since 2018, and in that time she’s had a significant structural overhaul: a rebuilt front beam, a carbon fibre longeron, and a carbon spreader-less rotating rig.
She has good bones. What she needed was updated construction techniques, modern materials, and someone willing to do the work properly. That’s the project.
And that’s what we’re sharing with you.
Right hand side image shows the original Catana 42 brochure — back when boat marketing meant a hand-drawn illustration and the design spoke for itself.
