How to Sail a Gunboat 68 Upwind: Mastering Apparent Wind Leaving Port-Camargue on a Gunboat 68, crossing the Gulf of Lion under a fresh offshore breeze — flat water for most of the transit, and plenty of wind to work with. A good day to talk through what actually happens to apparent wind as boat […]
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Catamaran Front Beam Load Paths: Why We Replaced Aluminium with Carbon The original aluminium front beam on Paikea worked. It had done 45,000 miles. But understanding why we replaced it requires understanding what a front beam actually has to do — and the original arrangement was doing it in a way that had some significant
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Paikea’s First Sea Trial: Carbon Front Beam, New Rudders, and a Midnight Sewing Job The sea trial almost didn’t happen on schedule. When we’d left for France earlier in the build — when Shayne was stepping the Gunboat 68 rig — Anna had set the mainsail head webbing in an approximate position, the intention being
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Sea Trials With Our New Mainsail Motor testing only tells you so much. To really know if a rebuilt boat is sound, you have to load it up under sail and see what happens. Paikea had already been out under motor to test the new front beam, longeron, folding propellers, rudders, flush skin fittings, and
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Left & Right Winches, and Mast Climbing Safety When left and right winches meet in the same pit Following up on marking your winches — here’s what it actually looks like at the professional end of the sport. Racing on a big offshore raceboat this week, the starboard pit runs genuinely mixed winch handing: right-hand
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Do You Want to Know How We Trim Our Downwind Sails? Two numbers on the instrument display tell you almost everything you need to know about trimming a sail — apparent wind and true wind — and most people never learn to read them properly. Apparent versus true wind, and why the difference matters True
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