Vacuum Bagging Complex Geometry: Joining a Carbon Beam to a Hull Vacuum bagging a flat panel is straightforward. Bagging a structural carbon tape that has to bond a beam to a hull — transitioning from vertical to horizontal, over compound curves, into tight internal corners — is where it gets interesting. The prep comes first, […]
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Recutting a Spinnaker Staysail into a Code 0 Tucked in the back corner of a sail container at the yard, there was a spinnaker staysail nobody wanted anymore — built by North Sails for the Swedish Victory Challenge’s 2007 America’s Cup campaign. Over fifteen years old, worn in places, and exactly what we needed. What
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Installing the Carbon Fibre Martingale The first thing you see in this video is the finished martingale in place. Then it cuts to Shayne drilling straight through the carbon front beam we’d built from America’s Cup mast sections. If you know what that beam is made of and what it cost in time and material
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Building a Carbon Fibre Seagull Striker and Martingale By this point in the front end build the beam and longeron were in, the centreboard and rudders were painted, the saildrives were out being serviced. The next job was the seagull striker and martingale — the compression strut and the tension strap that together stop the
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Servicing a Volvo Penta Saildrive Twenty-one years old, if the boot really was original. Either way, it had earned its retirement. With the saildrive out of the boat, the actual service work started — stripping the lock wire, scraping out years of marine growth, and working through the bolts that hold the saildrive unit to
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Removing a Volvo Penta Sail Drive Every seven years, that rubber boot needs to come out. Ours might have been original. Paikea runs a Volvo Penta 2003 series engine through a saildrive — the same setup on plenty of production cats her age, and the same weak point too. The boot is the rubber gaiter
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