Hola Barcelona!
Yep, after an adventurous few years, we are back where we started in the Mediterranean. Spain is where we decided to start modifying our Catana42 over 4 years ago.
We got our hands on an ex-America’s Cup rig that was destined for the rubbish. It was made from high-modulus carbon and was stiff enough that we didn’t need spreaders. That was a real bonus as it simplified things a lot. We also decided to make the mast rotating because…… well just because.
We had a variety of old racing sails that we could recut into sails for Paikea. A square top mainsail, a headsail, a storm sail, and a Code 0. We also had 2 RC44 kites that were perfect once I shortened the luffs.
In order to fly all these sails, we needed to then upgrade the existing front beam and add a longeron. It was a big job but Shayne did such an amazing job. The new trampoline netting that I was so skeptical about at first is beautiful and still looks brand new after almost 3 years.
The other major upgrade was 2 new rudder blades that we fitted to the existing stainless steel stock. In hindsight, this was not the best move because on our journey across the Atlantic one of these rudder stocks failed. We were 800nm from land when we lost our rudder.
Since then, we have spent almost 2 years cruising the windward island chain. We work a lot to pay for our dream. Mostly its Shayne on professional sailing gigs or design consultancy. We work together on servicing and troubleshooting rigs and rigging problems mostly on large multihulls and some of the larger racing yachts.
In between the paid work, one of the biggest projects we had was to build a carbon fiber chainplate to replace the stainless one that started moving.
Our plan for this summer was to make improvements on the interior of Paikea. This all changed when Shayne was offered a place on the French America’s Cup challenger team. It meant a total reassessment of location, our work, and priorities but in the end, we decided it was an opportunity we couldn’t refuse!
The rush to have everything ready for another Atlantic Crossing was intense. We had chainplates that needed to be replaced along with that rudder we lost on our first Atlantic crossing. We may have been able to get away with sailing between islands with only one rudder but not sailing across the open ocean back to Europe.
It was tricky to find the materials and resources needed and of course, if we had had our own workshop we would have tackled these projects a bit differently but eventually, we got the jobs done. All from the aft cockpit of Paikea.
Now that we are here in Barcelona, the focus will be on America’s Cup work but the hope is that we shall still be able to make improvements to Paikea when time allows.