Kaimusailing

Why the big lag in blogs? This was meant to be posted early last month, but several computer changes put my data out of reach for a while. So here is part one followed by a newer addition.



The past 2 months have included a trip to Hawaii and a trip to the West coast. Both trips cost the weekends going and coming. 4 weekends shot and it means the 2 months got 1 month's work at the boat.



One good thing was an attempt at putting a canopy over the deck. A pair of tarps was rigged over the central deck area. It is about 12 X 16 in area. It was amazing to be able to work in the heat protected from the sun beating down. We can use this right through August and accomplish some work in the heat of summer.



The solar charge controller that I had rigged up to charge the galley battery had failed. Unfortunately it was while I was away in California and it discharged the battery for more than a week. I emailed the manufacturer, looking for depot repair, but he emailed me back that he would warranty replace it. This was contingent on providing purchase invoice and pictures of meter readings of voltages at the battery, solar panel, and solar charge controller. When I began taking these measurements I found there was a voltage drop from the battery to the charge controller. There was corrosion, so I cleaned it up and then found the charge controller began working normally. This is a Sunsei 25W charge controller. The manufacturer will honor a 2 year warranty. Perhaps they are unbreakable.



There were big doin's down at the marina. The construction continued and it now looked like a football stadium was under construction. One area is about a hundred yards across and maybe 200 yards long, and consists of a steel skeleton high enough to ebable the building to accommodate an ICW sized mast. There is another building almost as large. When it's done it will be a remarkable marina. They still serve crabs in the restaurant, but that will be demolished and relocated in the new facility.



There are other blogs about sailing and when I read them I think my boat might be the best voyaging boat, or one of the best. There was an entry on the Wharram Builders website about a boat designed by Nigel Arens, but it was virtually a Wharram. So much the same, maybe a tribute from Arens to Wharram. Arens is well known as a racing multihull designer and it was a surprise to see him design a catamaran almost identical to a Wharram, which would be a cruising design. Apparenty it was to be a charter boat and the delivery price is $750,000.



Voyaging is an endurance event. The Wharram catamarans are voyaging boats and the genious of their design is a dessication of simple elements into a design that can be attacked by the racing folks, the keelboat folks, the liveaboards, and anyone else that wants to take a crack at simple straightforward thinking. His logic is foolproof. He's sold more plans to owner/builders than anyone else. The premise is that an everyday handyman can build a boat in his backyard that will be just as good, or better, than the yachts that cost so much and are only enjoyed by the elite. Many have bought his building plans, constructed a sailboat, and sailed off.



But this cheap, homebuilt philosophy isn't the whole story. Wharram had lucked out on an intuitive design that is now classic. These are good boats for voyaging, while being easily obtainable to everyman.



It is a complicated equation that his designs seem to answer in all aspects. Instead of a deckhouse like the French charter catamarans, he has none. Instead of the rounded shapes of other designs, he has harsh Vee shapes. Instead of complicated composite construction that can only be performed by boatyards with big budget skilled workers, he has instructions and home building details in his plans. The lack of a deckhouse means the boat can be bigger with the same amount of materials, have longer hulls, more free deck space, and can be transported from the building site to launch site one hull at a time. The harsh Vee hull shapes turn out to be the optimum for handing rough seas. If a boat is built with simple technology, then repair can be made in the 3rd world, where many voyagers find themselves.



These boats are easily driven and designed with conservative rigs. We sailed with a 300 sq ft stays'l at 5 knots for a day, due to the main halyard being up the mast, and put in 60 miles overnight. A light air sail downwind in 7 knots of wind gave us 5 knots of boatspeed.



The drawback is there is no accommodation on deck and the hulls were described to me as, "two german submarines tied together".



Wharram says instead of deck accommodation, put the material into even longer hulls, then you have longer waterline length to increase hull speed, and you have a larger base for stability when storms hit.



Down below, the narrow hulls dictate a confined plan that restricts the crew to little segments of the hull. The bunks are large enough to enjoy solitude and the V hull sides are backrests when sitting in your bunk and using your laptop computer or maybe a writing pad. The idea is to give privacy to the crew in their own secluded bunk space. A typical monohull sailboat has a vee birth forward, followed by a head, then a cabin with a dinette or dropleaf table, settees that maybe convert to bunks, a galley and navigation table, and quarter births extending aft. Larger boats might have an aft cabin and a second head. On a Wharram, the typical arrangement is galley and dinette in the widest part of one hull with large bunks forward and aft of it, separated by a bulkhead with an access doorway. The other hull will have a large chartroom in the middle of the boat with similar bunk arrangement. Head and storage spaces are in the ends of the hulls. The 4 ends will typically have one head, a sail locker, a tool locker, and ground tackle storage.



To get to the head, the crew has to go on deck and then go down into the head. The same is so for any other space that is in one hull and not in the other. This isn't much of a problem when you're out sailing. Most of the activity is on deck. Kaimu has a pilothouse only two steps down from the on deck helm station. It has a second wheel to control the boat inside out of the weather. The autopilot and nav computer can be kept out of the elements. On the other side of the boat is a small chart room with access to the head/shower. There are access hatches forward on both hulls, on one side is access to a large bunk and vanity space which has lots of storage cabinets and a twin bunk forward, on the other side is access to the galley/dinette which also has a twin bunk forward. Both twin bunks have large deck hatches that are clear to allow light into the bunks.



To be able to stay in a bunk and not have other ships activity cross over you is a virtue. Crew that wants to be in private can stay in their bunk and be separate from everyone else. On deck is a different story. There is great deck space. It is stable, like walking on the sidewalk on dry land. Drinks stay upright, nothing slides down the deck into the drink. Spray from the bows slicing through waves will fall on the windward part of the deck, while the crew finds areas immune from the spray. It is easy to get around on deck and take care of sail handling or unsnagging lines. A recent catamaran from MaineCat has adopted Wharram's open deck concept. It is only $450,000 and on back order.



Years ago all boats had full length keels or centerboards. Designers found that performance could be improved by cutting away some of the keel area and eventually this design trend resulted in the modern fin keel. The fin keel also enables quick handling, the boat can turn faster. The downside is that the boat requires more attention to maintain course. The older full keel designs would actually be more desirable for voyagers. The Wharram catamaran has full keels and is extremely steady. One can leave the helm and coil up a line, yet the boat continues as if on railroad tracks. It will self steer on most windward courses. When the autopilot is used, it works very little. When I compare sailing my 44' Wharram to sailing my former 34' fin keeled sloop, the sloop was difficult to sail singlehandedly, the catamaran was as easy to sail as a dinghy. Bigger, faster, way more deck space, smoother ride in rough weather, and less fatigue on long passage, the choice is in favor of the Wharram catamaran.



Now for more recent activity. Work continued through the hot weather, but there were days that were too hot, it was a hot summer. The electrical system on deck was installed, including an instrument panel and large high amperage cables forward to the windlass. Then last year's deck table project began anew. There are six table surfaces, two center surfaces with two dropleaves for each. There is one center table from the helm station to the mast and another from the mast forward. The entire table is about 8 feet long and 6 feet wide. Seating is on the cabin tops. So far we have the 1st center table installed, next will be more of the underlying framework, and then the 2nd center table can be installed, then the dropleaves. These table pieces are blanks that need final refinishing with clear urethane laquer.



The engine was also tested with the new electrical system and it wouldn't start. The instrument panel includes a voltage meter, which showed a steady fully charged battery, even when trying the starter. It took a long time to figure out the problem. The ground cable to the engine had corrosion at the battery terminal and cleaning that fixed it. Because there are two cables on each battery terminal, one to the engine and one forward to the windlass, and the windlass cables were on top of the engine cables, it was hard to find the bad connection on the engine ground cable.



The computer work was a search for a core 2 duo machine to install linux on and then those applications that were tested on an old Dell L400, which has a pentium III processor and slow 650 mHz speed. On a core 2 duo machine, this software should fly. First I bought a Fugitsu Lifebook on ebay which looked like it had Vista OS. When it arrived, for less than $200, it had Windows 7 OS and Office 2010 installed. No way was I going to overwrite that OS. Then Dottie, my Safety Officer (or S. O.), wanted that Lifebook, and I had to find another laptop. Once again ebay provided for about $200 a Lenovo (IBM) core duo machine, but it has Windows XP, so I installed my Windows based nav software on it. Then I tried again and got a Toshiba core 2 duo with no OS, no hard drive, and broken display. It was only $128. The display replacement was about $85. I put a 250 gig drive in it and installed Lubuntu on half of the drive and Ubuntu on the other half. The Lubuntu was for 32 bit linux applications and Ubuntu was 64 bit OS to access the full 4 gigs of memory. The nav software installed is Seafarer. Weatherfax linux applications are open source and free. Have installed them, but not tested yet. Other computer work was repair of my old HP. It's not reliable enough for dependable navigation computer, but it has a ton of software installed and could be used as an emergency backup. Same with the old Dell L400. I am planning to use mostly electronic charts and therefore require plenty of backups in case of electronics failures at sea. The windows machines have the problem of being targets of malware, so having linux machines as alternates is a good idea. Now the quantity of laptops has become ridiculous. I should have 4, primary and backup for windows, primary and backup for linux. It has become 2 linux machines and 4 windows machines. The new IBM as primary, the older toughbook as backup, the HP as emergency backup, plus an old Gateway that still works, so I'll keep it around. The Toshiba and Dell are the linux machines. Linux will run windows applications under the WINE linux application, but performance will be slower, better to run windows applications on a windows machine. Maybe we'll have some Weatherfax testing next blog.