Sailing and upgrading our performance catamaran, a Catana42s named Paikea
Why use peel ply? What are the benefits of using peel ply? A quick chat on why peel ply is important in your consumables stack. This is a little bit of extra goodness from our how to vacuum bag complex geometry vids. If you haven’t seen these videos make sure you check them out as […]
The benefits of using peel ply Read More »
Removing the vacuum bag from our carbon fibre front beam after it has cured. If you watched our previous video on vacuum bagging our front beam you may be wondering what the end product looked like. Did we get the surface finish we were hoping for and did the vacuum bag work like we believed
Removing the vacuum bag from our carbon front beam Read More »
Launch date is fast approaching and we are nowhere near ready! Take a look at the jobs we have done so far and what we still need to do. We’ve completed the covers for the sail drives, glued the track on for the trampoline, painted the prop speed on the propellers and the kids are
Preparation for winglets on rudders Read More »
We have had quite a few comments on our YouTube channel asking how we go about the process of vacuum bagging our laminates. In this case, we have a wet laminate joining the hulls to the front beam which we need to put under a vacuum. It’s a tricky one as it’s not a flat
How we vacuum bag complex geometry Read More »
I was lucky enough to stumble across an old spinnaker staysail tucked in the back corner of a sail container at the yard here. It was originally built by North Sails for the Swedish Victory Challenge campaign in 2007. A spinnaker staysail or in this case a SS 2-3 refers to the type and design
Recutting a spinnaker staysail into a Code 0 Read More »
This episode covers the mammoth job of installing our new carbon fibre martingale. The martingale is the strap of carbon which spans the front beam on a catamaran and helps distribute the load from the forestay. For each new project on Paikea, Shayne draws a 3D model on Solid Edge which helps with getting an
Fitting our carbon fibre martingale to our catamaran Read More »
The Seagull Striker and Martingale are a critical structural part of the forward beam on the vast majority of catamarans. They strengthen the front beam between the two bows and take the load from the forestay which is usually either attached to the beam or the longeron. In our case, we will make the forestay
How we made our carbon fibre seagull striker and martingale Read More »
While Paikea is out of the water it is a perfect time to have a good look at our Volvo Penta sail drives. Shayne has already made up some nice new fibreglass covers to fit over the holes in the hulls where the sail drive enters the water. Now it’s time to clean up the
Servicing a Volvo Penta saildrive Read More »
Our Volvo Penta sail drives are in desperate need of some attention. We have spent a lot of time making fairs to cover the exposed hole around the sail drives on the exterior of the hull and now that project is nearing completion it’s time to get the actual sail drives.out of the boat and
Removing a Volvo Penta sail drive from our Catana 42s Read More »
When we bought Paikea in 2018 she had only one working rudder. The starboard side had an emergency rudder made of some sort of plastic plate attached to the rudder stock. The emergency rudder was only supposed to be a temporary solution however the previous owner claimed he had bought the boat like that and
Making our own catamaran rudders Read More »