Building Carbon Fibre Chainplates: Part One Some jobs start small and grow into something else entirely. This one started with a bolt swap in Brittany. By the time it caught up with us properly, it had turned into a full chainplate rebuild — and Shayne was on the other side of the Atlantic delivering Gunboats […]
Building Carbon Fibre Chainplates: Part One Read More »
If you’ve been following along, you’ll know that losing a rudder mid-Atlantic and building a replacement at anchor in the Caribbean was not the plan. But it did give Shayne something invaluable: a reason to design the right rudders for Paikea from scratch, with real data to work from. This post walks through the design
Paikea’s New Rudder Design: How We Did It and Why Read More »
We are in Antigua and it’s just weeks away from Hurricane Season. Shayne has been asked to help deliver a Gunboat 68 from the Caribbean to France while Anna and the kids stay behind with Paikea. It means last minute repairs to the carbon solar panel bracket we put together in Cadiz, Spain. See our
Laminating the Solar panel bracket Read More »
We have a Nemo brand jib furler on Paikea. It is the original one that came with the old mast. When we built our carbon rotating mast we retrofitted the existing stainless steel wire stays from our aluminum mast to our new rig. We did this for 2 reasons. the first being that we had
Servicing our Headstay Furler Read More »
Antigua Downwind Blast: Racing the Clock and Losing a Spinnaker Some passages get planned weeks in advance. This one got planned around a party invitation and a six-hour weather window — get from Green Island, on the easternmost tip of Antigua, all the way around to Jolly Harbour on the western side, with enough time
Antigua Downwind Blast: Racing the Clock and Losing a Spinnaker Read More »
Did Losing a Rudder Damage our Hulls? We’d just crossed the Atlantic on one rudder. We knew what had happened — the port stock had failed mid-ocean, the blade had torn away, and we’d sailed Paikea nearly 800 nautical miles to the Canaries and then on to the Caribbean to sort it out. What we
St Lucia and Rudder Damage Analysis Read More »
