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 just enough to manoeuvre the saildrive mounts out — a careful job with a bottle jack, done properly. The saildrives were cleaned, serviced, and repainted. Harry pulled the anchor winch apart and cleaned it. The rudders got their antifoul. The hull got its final coat.
The rudder winglets weren’t going to happen before the splash — there wasn’t time to mould them — but the prep work could. Kent, the professional boatbuilder who’d helped with the rudder build, had made the rudder tips with a solid fibreglass plate laminated into the foam specifically for this purpose. Shayne drilled into those plates and potted a carbon rod through each one — SpaBond, midnight, antifoul going over the top before it was fully cured because the crane was coming in a few hours. The carbon rod becomes the spar that the winglets bolt onto. The attachment point is solid, the core isn’t compromised, and the winglets can go on in the water.
The saildrive fairings were another job from this period — covers that close the gap between the saildrive leg and the hull entry, smoothing the water flow where it was previously turbulent and creating drag. Fabricated in composite, fitted flush, simple in concept but worth doing on a boat that’s trying to go fast.
The crane lift was the same situation as the haul-out — no spreader bar, because spreader bars are apparently not a thing in Spain. Long slings, which gets the geometry better but doesn’t eliminate the anxiety. This time there was an additional complication: the aluminium gunwale rail would take the full load of the strap where it bent around the hull. Shayne put a block of wood between the strap and the rail, positioned directly in line with the internal bulkhead so the load went into the structure rather than into the extrusion. Simple, effective.
Paikea went in at lunchtime. Shayne checked all the new seacocks and filled holes from inside — no water. The trampoline still needed finishing. The winglets still needed moulding. The list is never empty. But she was back in the water, and that felt good.
The winglet build continues in a later post. For the composite work, the members’ technical library covers the detail behind how we approach these jobs on Paikea. Join here.