Sailing with the Code 0 and Our First Choice for Furler
The whole point of replacing Paikea’s aluminium front beam with a carbon beam, longeron, and bow pole was sail inventory. A stronger front end doesn’t mean much on its own — what it actually buys you is the ability to fly sails the old setup never could. From the bow pole, we can now fly the Code 0 and asymmetric spinnakers. From the longeron, a removable inner forestay carries a trinket or storm sail. Once Anna finished building the new Code 0 from recycled America’s Cup cloth, the last piece of the puzzle was sourcing a furler good enough to actually do it justice.
A gaff lock, still being worked out
One of the smaller experiments underway is a headboard gaff lock — a mechanism that lets the head of the square-top mainsail detach cleanly from the halyard car, so the gaff batten can lie flat in the sail bag instead of fighting the shape of the bag. The usual approach uses a pin-and-plate arrangement; the version being trialled here swaps that for webbing instead, since that’s what was on hand. Early testing showed the webbing needs a reasonable amount of load in the system before it reliably jumps and hooks over — too soft, and it doesn’t quite engage the way a pin naturally slides home. Still a work in progress, tested on a 2:1 purchase rather than the 1:1 arrangement used on larger boats, to see how it behaves under real load.
A titanium pin from spare parts
Before the Code 0 could go up for the first time, the attachment point needed its pin — machined from titanium salvaged from spreader compression tube offcuts left over from earlier mast work. Nothing about this build wastes material that still has a job left in it, and this pin is a small, clean example of that habit playing out yet again.
Choosing a furler: why KZ, and nothing else
There’s no shortage of furler brands on the market — Karver, Profurl, Facnor, and a long list of generic options below them — but for a serious performance boat, there’s really only one answer: KZ. Reliability is the deciding factor. KZ furlers are a genuine step up from everything else, including the gear used on considerably larger boats professionally, and the difference shows up specifically under load. Spin a KZ furler at maximum load and it still turns smoothly; other premium brands, Facnor included, start showing early rust staining from the bearings and noticeable resistance under the same conditions. Materials, bearing selection, and tolerancing all point to a company that’s simply got the engineering right.
The one genuine gripe: on the inshore version fitted here, the plastic guard has to come off just to access the furling line — a compromise not present on the offshore version’s wire guard, but one that isn’t offered at this smaller size. A small inconvenience, worth living with given everything else the unit does well.
The setup runs a 2:1 tack line for now, with a custom 3:1 option already being built to order — one of KZ’s other strengths is genuine custom fabrication at a reasonable price, not just off-the-shelf sizing. The cable used inside the furler is a lower-grade option with a sailmaker’s thimble rather than KZ’s usual fixed-length cable with a machined thimble hole — a compromise made on cost rather than performance, and one that still works perfectly well in practice.
The top of the swivel is built specifically for soft shackle attachment — one of several interchangeable top-fitting options KZ offers, secured with a simple grub screw. That detail matters more than it sounds: because the same swivel and furling unit can be uncoupled and reused for the trinket sail, which carries a similar load profile to the Code 0, one furler effectively does the job of two. Fewer units to buy, fewer units to maintain, and full interchangeability between sails that would otherwise each demand dedicated hardware.
Head, clew, and sheet construction
The Code 0’s head and clew are built with minimal hardware — a length of Dyneema sewn directly into the clew, a spliced eye at the other end, and a soft shackle connecting the sheet. Almost no metal anywhere in the system, aside from a small aluminium tack fitting. The sail itself lives in its bag between uses rather than staying hoisted — a simple habit that keeps UV and wind exposure from quietly destroying an expensive sail between sails.
A tail section on the clew end of the sheet serves a specific, easy-to-overlook purpose: keeping the covered and uncovered sections of the sheet landing in the same place on the winch regardless of which sail is flying. Since the Code 0 and the asymmetric spinnaker sheets need different tail lengths to line up correctly, adjusting that tail length is what keeps the sheeting geometry consistent between sails, sail after sail. It also earns its keep during a jibe — with cover only added where UV or chafe protection is actually needed, the tail keeps two separate sheets clear of the clew’s hard connection points as everything works its way around the forestay. The sail passes first; the harder, knottier bits with actual load-bearing connections follow a beat behind, by which point the awkward part of the manoeuvre is already done.
How it’s actually sheeted
Nothing exotic about the current sheeting arrangement — a block at the aft corner of the boat, an original fitting that came with Paikea and isn’t the best available, but does the job. From there the sheet runs to the mainsail’s shooting point and up to the winch. It’s not a perfect setup: it creates what amounts to a square of failure points, where a block or fitting letting go under load puts anyone standing nearby, including whoever’s on the wheel, directly in the path of a suddenly loaded sheet. A cleaner re-rig — a new block on the gunwale, sheeted straight to the primary winch — is on the list, but it means drilling and sealing new holes through the deck and removing headliners to do properly. For now, what’s here works, and the fix stays in the “someday” pile rather than the urgent one.
The barber hauler setup is deliberately simple: a small pulley block and a horn cleat, with a loop that hooks straight over the cleat and a block-and-tackle arrangement doing the actual work. Running deep downwind with the Code 0 — technically past the point the sail’s really designed for — the barber hauler becomes the tool that keeps leech tension under control when the sail’s being pushed outside its comfort zone. On the jib, it’s not optional. It’s one of the most-used pieces of hardware on the boat.
The sail itself, and its limited remaining life
The Code 0’s cloth started life as America’s Cup material from 2007, or slightly before — somewhere around fourteen to fifteen years old by the time it went up on Paikea. Some early delamination is already showing, which tracks with cloth that age, no matter how well it was built originally. It’s not really an inexpensive sail dressed up as a bargain — the trade is limited remaining lifespan in exchange for performance that simply wasn’t available on the boat before. At some point, this Code 0 will need replacing outright. Until then, it’s doing a job Paikea never could before it existed.
Part of our Sails story
This post is one piece of Paikea’s full sail inventory and philosophy — see the complete picture, including the rest of the build stories, at Paikea’s Sails.