Crack in the Hull and Asymmetric Rudders: Barcelona Refit Begins With Paikea on the hard in Barcelona, it was time to lay out exactly what this refit actually involves — and the honest answer is: almost everything. The Full Strip-Out The interior’s coming out, all of it. It’s original timber — heavy, and in places […]
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Hauling Out Paikea: Discovering a Hull Crack and Starting Her Interior Refit We’re back in the Mediterranean, in Barcelona, which is roughly where this whole project started. It felt right to be back here for the next chapter — hauling Paikea out for her biggest refit yet. A Quick Recap of How We Got Here
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Azores to Gibraltar: Sailing Paikea Upwind Across the Atlantic We left Horta on the island of Faial with about a thousand nautical miles between us and Gibraltar, and we weren’t going to get there in a straight line. The plan was to sail up past Terceira, tuck into the eastern side of a high pressure
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Correcting Mast Rake: Why It Matters and How We Fixed Two Years of Too Much When we built and fitted Paikea’s new carbon front beam, we knew we were changing more than just the beam. The original beam, like most catamaran front beams, sat flat. Ours doesn’t — we couldn’t source a single piece of
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Building Carbon Fibre Chainplates: Part Three — The Starboard Side The rudder project running through this same stretch of time wasn’t happening in isolation — there was a lot going on aboard Paikea at once, and this starboard chainplate rebuild was one of several things competing for attention in the same tight window. It’s worth
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Carbon vs. Fiberglass: Building for Performance and Reliability People ask often enough why some parts of Paikea are carbon and others are plain fiberglass — the rudder blade being the clearest example. The honest answer isn’t glamorous: it comes down to fit for purpose, what was actually available in the Caribbean at the time, and
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