Building a Carbon Fibre Seagull Striker and Martingale By this point in the front end build the beam and longeron were in, the centreboard and rudders were painted, the saildrives were out being serviced. The next job was the seagull striker and martingale — the compression strut and the tension strap that together stop the
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Making Rudder Moulds from an America’s Cup Foil The Valencia rudder build started with a stroke of luck. Rather than designing a foil profile from scratch, Shayne had access to something better — a rudder blade from the Spanish Ibedrola team’s 2007 America’s Cup campaign. Bright green, a proper grand prix foil, sitting in storage.
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Transom Extension, Saildrive Housing, and an America’s Cup Rudder Shayne had been away since October working professional rigging jobs. He came back two days before Christmas and went straight into cutting away the transom of our boat. That’s the pace of this refit. Cutting Away the Transom The original Catana transoms had a step that
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DIY Square-Top Mainsail: 3D-Printed Batten Receptacles Paikea’s mainsail started life on a 72-foot superyacht. It was a delivery main — big, heavy cloth built for a boat three times our size — picked up during lockdown when boat parts weren’t exactly easy to come by and budgets were tighter than usual. Anna took it on:
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Building a Carbon Front Beam from America’s Cup Mast Sections This one started with two projects running in parallel. Anna was up in the sail loft recutting a fractional kite while Shayne was in the grinding bay with sections of an America’s Cup mast, working out how to turn them into a front beam. The
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Crane Haul Out Without a Spreader Bar The local travel lift wasn’t going to work. Paikea’s beam is too wide, so a crane was the only option — which meant more logistics, more preparation, and a slightly higher pucker factor when your home is dangling in a sling thirty feet off the ground. We had
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