Pahi 63 'Spirit of Gaia' is a test case to see the durability of wood epoxy and of various design elements we used in her. Twenty years since her launching (1992), she was sailed hard during the first 6 years, including a round the world voyage. She spent the next 9 years sailing during the summer in the Ionian Sea and Adriatic and the last 5 years quietly resting in Trizonia, while we went off sailing the Lapita Voyage.
In these 20 years she had overhauls in 1996 in New Zealand, a major one in 1997 in Australia, in 1999 in Corfu after completing her circumnavigation, another major one in 2002 when we renewed the hardwood toerails and netting, removed the bow centre boards, shortened the rudders and repainted the deckpods and the upper hullsides. The last time she was out of the water was in 2005 and last maintenance work was done in 2007. Two years ago I did a survey and found various patches of rot in hatch coamings (all outside the glass covering of the hulls) and the lids of the engine boxes were becoming cracked and rotten. These parts have been heavily used as part of the centre deck and living area.
Hanneke, James and a varying team of helpers have made an annual visit to Greece since 2012 to carry out maintenance work. These blogs cover this work in detail and we hope they may be useful to you in carrying out your own maintenance, or building/renovation project.
We sailed here last Sunday, four days ago. Before that we (four of us) spent one week in Trizonia, in the Gulf of Corinth getting Spirit of Gaia ready for the move. This meant lots of cleaning, and scraping the underwater ship to remove the encrustations of 5 years lying in harbour. While scraping from the dinghy with a long-handled wide scraper, Michael saw pieces of coral 4 inches long...
While cleaning the forward deckpods we had noticed some little heaps of ‘sand’ on the shelves and had not been able to figure out what they were or how they had got there. Then when Michael removed the big mast bolts, one of the backing pads came away as a heap of crumbs. The inner layers had been completely consumed by some creature!
I travelled by car and ferry from the UK with two volunteers, Dutch Michael, who helped me last Autumn (and also helped to build Amatasi in 2011) and Tony, an old acquaintance from Manchester, who built one of our early 27ft Tane designs in the 1960s, built a Pahi 31 in the 80s and renovated another Tane in the 90s, which he sailed in Greece for many years.
In my last blog I said we wanted Gaia ready to sail in September. The fates decided otherwise. Last summer became a sad and stressful time culminating in the death of Ruth (Wharram) in September. In May James and I visited Sète in the South of France, where we attended the meeting of the ‘Golden Oldies’, a big meeting of early racing multihulls from the 1970s and 80s. We stayed on a sister ship of Spirit of Gaia, the ‘Largyalo’.
We arrived by car in Messolonghi at the end of March accompanied by Michael, our Dutch helper. We were ready for another stint of work and hoping to get it all finished before planning to return home sometime at the end of May. First thing to check was, were the termites truly dead? Careful inspection showed absolutely no signs of life, the insecticide had done its job and I was happy to start restoring the woodwork.
Another year and still more work. We have had to face up to the fact that the renovation of our flagship Spirit of Gaia is taking much longer than originally planned, but at last the end is in sight. We are aiming for perfection. Last autumn we flew to Greece for 3 weeks to do some more work with the help of Michael and Sigrid, in that time I had the loan of a lovely aluminium scaffold and was able to renovate the stem and stern posts.
2016 is the year in which Gaia has finally been relaunched after 4 years of renovation work. Two months work this Springtime, sandwiched between hard work to build the new Mana 24 in Cornwall, gave us insufficient time to launch, so we returned for this in the Autumn. This season’s job list was: get the beams lashed on, rig the masts and raise them, finish all the paintwork on the hulls, renovate the bowwalk, slatted walkways and centre platform.
Gaia is launched! Finally after 4 years of hard work Spirit of Gaia was lifted back into her natural element. We returned to Messolonghi to prepare Gaia for launching and to take her on her first trial sails. On arrival we were faced with a marina in deadlock. ALL work in the marina had come to a total standstill. During the so-called ban on ‘work’ in Spring, the marina was still lifting and launching boats on a daily basis, this had now totally ceased...
Two and a half years have gone by since my last instalment. Spirit of Gaia was launched and sailing, but there was still more work to do. Gaia was left moored on the outer pontoon in Messolonghi Marina for the winter of 2016-17. On our return the next Spring we knew we could not stay in Messolonghi. The legal impasse in the marina was still the same and if a yacht now left the pontoons it would not be able to return. We needed to find a new home for Gaia, and particularly we needed somewhere to antifoul.
We returned mid September together with Brian and were joined by two new volunteers, Paul, a Web designer and massage expert, came from England, and Italian Paolo arrived from Milan by car. But first there was another problem - rats!
We had the happy news that Ruairi had managed to persuade the boatyard to haul us out with their winch. Haul out day was arranged for May 9th, a week after our arrival. The big winch was able to pull Gaia up the gentle slope on greased logs. Heavy webbing strops were looped round the two front crossbeams, close to the hulls to spread the load. The whole process was successful and carried out with skill and professionalism by the yard crew.
The final work started on May 1st. My previous blogs had again attracted new volunteers that wanted to experience spending time with James and myself whilst working and sailing on Gaia. Spirit of Gaia now awaits us in Vliho, looking as good, if not better as when she first sailed 27 years ago.
James compares Gaia’s design features with those of the charter Pahi 52. Spirit of Gaia's Wingsail Rig is tested by other catamaran sailors.
An article from Cruising Helmsman magazine about Mark Smaalders's cruise on Pahi 63 'Spirit of Gaia' from Cairns to Darwin. He discusses Gaia's characteristics from a traditional monohull sailor's point of view.
Nic Compton learns how the unorthodox British designer, James Wharram, took his family and fans around the world in his handcrafted catamaran, gaining some valuable lessons along the way.
