Carbon vs. Fiberglass: Building for Performance and Reliability People ask often enough why some parts of Paikea are carbon and others are plain fiberglass — the rudder blade being the clearest example. The honest answer isn’t glamorous: it comes down to fit for purpose, what was actually available in the Caribbean at the time, and
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This one’s for members Our members library is where the real work lives: original technical content from the people who did the work, using materials and methods from the highest levels of the sport. Inside our Membership Site: Extended video walkthroughs from Paikea’s refit and our professional jobs New members videos uploaded regularly Downloads and
Carbon Fibre vs. S-Glass vs. E-Glass: Read More »
Making a Composite Rudder Part Two: Laminating, Fairing and Getting It on the Boat There was a deadline on this one. Shayne had accepted a job as rigger for the French America’s Cup team and we needed to get to Barcelona. Five days to finish two rudder blades, get them installed, and be ready to
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Making a Composite Rudder Part One: Shaping the Foam Blank This footage starts mid-Atlantic. We’re three days without a port rudder, still four or five days out from land, watching the rudder angle readout and trying to keep it between two and five degrees in normal conditions. The breeze is light so we’ve got the
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Our Custom Mainsail Reefing System: How It All Works A lot of reefing complaints come down to the same root cause: an undersized system trying to do a job it was never built for. Small 24mm track with basic sliders jams under real load, sails get hard to hoist, reefing downwind becomes genuinely difficult —
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Engineering Paikea’s Rig: Adapting America’s Cup Technology for Cruising Taking an IACC mast and making it work on a cruising catamaran isn’t a matter of cutting it to length and stepping it. Every system on the original rig was designed for a grand prix racing programme with a full crew, unlimited budget, and a single
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