Downwind Spinnaker Trim: Windward Bow, Twist, and Reading the Apparent Wind Halfway across the Atlantic, in solid 20-knot trade winds with the sea state finally settling down, is about as good a moment as any for a proper downwind trim lesson — and this one covers something that trips up a lot of sailors moving […]
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Mainsheet Systems Compared: Why Paikea’s A-Frame Doesn’t Hold Up In the Gunboat 68 mainsheet post, the traveller system handled twist and power as two clean, independent controls. Paikea runs something very different — a double-ended A-frame system, common on older-style French catamarans, with no traveller at all. Two sheets, one to a winch on each
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How to Trim the Mainsheet on a Gunboat 68 Reaching under an A3 spinnaker with the first reef tucked in, daggerboards well out — two metres on the leeward board, two and a half on the windward — because the apparent wind is still forward enough to want to push the boat sideways, even with
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Boat Door Design: What a Gunboat 68 Gets Right A question that comes up often enough to deserve a proper answer: is it normal for your catamaran’s doors and lockers to jam shut while sailing? No. Not on a well-built boat, and it shouldn’t be accepted as normal on any boat — even a soft,
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The Performance Catamaran Comfort Trade-Off Four in the morning, twelve knots upwind, and no sleep to speak of. This is what fast actually costs. People ask for a fast boat all the time. The honest answer worth giving back is a question: do you actually want a fast boat, or do you want the idea
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Making a Solar Bracket and Leaving Cadiz Three days to build a new solar mounting frame from scratch, before a weather window slams shut and Paikea’s first real open-ocean passage begins. How the old frame broke The original solar frame took damage from something every liveaboard sailor eventually experiences: an anchor that didn’t hold. Riding
Sailing from Spain to the Canary Islands! Read More »
