Carbon Fibre Bow Pole: Finishing the America’s Cup Front End The bow pole is the top section of the same America’s Cup mast that became the front beam and longeron. It had all its original halyard exits and fittings still attached when we got it, which created both opportunities and problems — some hardware was […]
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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
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Forestay Attachment and Wet Preg: Engineering the Pin Into a Carbon Longeron Attaching a forestay to a carbon longeron built from recycled mast sections isn’t a standard job. There are no off-the-shelf fittings for this configuration — the geometry is specific to this mast, this boat, and this longeron position. Shayne spent a lot of
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The Benefits of Using Peel Ply Peel ply is the layer that never stays with the boat — and it’s doing more work than its five minutes of fame in the lamination stack would suggest. It goes on as the first layer against the laminate, and it comes off before the next layer goes on.
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Removing the Vacuum Bag: What Good Consolidation Actually Looks Like The bag came off well. The breather felt was saturated with bleed-off — more than ideal, which means slightly more resin went in than necessary, but it also means the laminate was fully wet out before the vacuum did its job. The frog’s tongue had
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Rudder Winglets, Saildrive Fairings, and Getting Paikea Back in the Water Shayne had a bad knee. The splash date was fixed. This is what a refit looks like when you have a deadline, a crew of three boys, and one parent on light duties. The kids stepped up. Ayden and Harry got the engine lifted
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