Discovering Chainplate Movement: Bolt Failure and Bulkhead Rot Some problems on a boat announce themselves. Others hide in plain sight for years, waiting for the right conditions to become visible. This one falls firmly into the second category — and it only came to light because of an unrelated job Shayne had done not long […]
Discovering Chainplate Movement: Bolt Failure and Bulkhead Rot Read More »
Arriving in the Canary Islands after a great sail down from Cadiz. The next instalment in our video diary as we prepare to take our modified Catana42s across the Atlantic Ocean. Our carbon longeron and front beam are fantastic but Shayne is worried about chafing on the navigation lights we have installed inside the bow
Boat preparation in Las Palmas, Canary Islands Read More »
The Carbon Longeron: How a Recycled America’s Cup Mast Changed Everything The longeron is the big black pole that runs down the middle of the trampoline. It’s probably the single most transformative thing we’ve done to Paikea, and we somehow managed to not really talk about it properly until now. Before it went in, there
The Carbon Longeron: How a Recycled America’s Cup Mast Changed Everything Read More »
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
Mainsheet Systems Compared: Why Paikea’s A-Frame Doesn’t Hold Up Read More »
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
How to Trim the Mainsheet on a Gunboat 68 Read More »
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,
Boat Door Design: What a Gunboat 68 Gets Right Read More »
