Carbon Anchor Roller, Nav Lights, and the Final Details on Paikea’s Front End
The structural work was done. What remained was the detail — and on a build like this the detail takes as long as the structure.
The trampoline tracks needed to move up. The original position was too low for the geometry of the new front end, so the old hatches came out, new PVC tube was laminated in with carbon at the raised position, and slots were cut to expose the stainless rod that the trampoline lashings tie to. Paint over everything, then the trampoline could finally go on.
The nav light question had been going around for a while. The options were all compromised. Lights on the bows are constantly in spray and corrode fast. Lights on the martingale are directly in the path of tack lines for the code zero and spinnakers — a guaranteed casualty eventually. Lights on the mast would require gimbals because the mast rotates. What Shayne settled on was building carbon angle channels into the bow pole fairing, positioning the lights up high enough to be clear of any sail blanketing and protected enough that a wayward sheet would have to work hard to reach them. It’s the least bad option in a situation where there isn’t a perfect one. The bow pole is high enough that the lights aren’t in the spray zone, and above the level where any of the headsail tack arrangements would be running.
The bow pole itself is worth pausing on. It’s the top section of a 2007-era America’s Cup mast — and Shayne built four masthead sections like this for the Cup in 2003. The hardware still embedded in it when we got it was the locking mechanism for the mainsail and the masthead halyard arrangement for hoisting it. On those rigs the main went up on a repurposed spinnaker halyard — a crew member at the top of the mast would flip the halyard backwards over a sheave, hoist the main to the lock, engage it, then flip the halyard back. Dropping the main reversed the process, or a trip line could release the lock from the deck. All of it faired over to make the top of the rig as aerodynamic as possible. Now those fairings are being carefully opened up to make channels for nav lights. Recycling with full awareness of what’s being recycled.
The primer going on over all the carbon was Jotamastic — a blended epoxy urethane from the professional boat painting world, halfway between primer and topcoat, bonds hard to composites and builds enough to sand back flat. Everything black, which looked brilliant and absorbed heat like a furnace in the Valencia sun.
The list at the end of the video was: nav light brackets glued on, extra carbon inside the forestay pin connection, paint, trampoline. Then departure.
This is the final post in the Paikea front end rebuild series — carbon beam, longeron, seagull striker, martingale, bow pole, anchor roller, nav lights, and trampoline, all built from recycled America’s Cup mast sections. The full engineering detail is in the members’ technical library. Join here.