Kaimusailing

s/v Kaimu Wharram Catamaran

Vessel Name: Kaimu
Vessel Make/Model: Wharram Custom
Hailing Port: Norwalk, CT
Crew: Andy and the Kaimu Crew
About: Sailors in the Baltimore, Annapolis, DC area.
21 March 2024 | St. Marys, GA
01 March 2024 | St. Marys, GA
23 February 2024 | St. Marys, GA
15 February 2024 | St. Marys, GA
11 February 2024 | St. Marys, GA
06 February 2024 | St. Marys, GA
26 January 2024 | St. Marys, GA
14 January 2024 | St. Marys, GA
09 January 2024 | St Marys, GA
23 December 2023 | St Marys, GA
10 December 2023 | St Marys, GA
25 November 2023 | St. Marys, GA
17 November 2023 | St. Marys, GA
17 November 2023 | Somers Cove Marina, Crisfield, MD
03 November 2023 | Somers Cove Marina, Crisfield, MD
26 October 2023 | Somers Cove Marina, Crisfield, MD
17 October 2023 | Somers Cove Marina, Crisfield, MD
11 October 2023 | Somers Cove Marina, Crisfield, MD
04 October 2023 | Alice B. Tawes, McReady Pavilion, Crisfield, Maryland Eastern Shore
03 October 2023 | Alice B. Tawes, McReady Pavilion, Crisfield, Maryland Eastern Shore
Recent Blog Posts
21 March 2024 | St. Marys, GA

Just Add Water

The rainy weekend started off with overcast and fog but no rain. It looked like I might be able to get something done on the D4 dinghy. I wanted to change the bow seat which is really the bow deck. The sailing option uses the deck to hold the freestanding mast. I didn’t like how the deck looked, [...]

01 March 2024 | St. Marys, GA

D4 Dinghy Alternative Seats

The rain event was more wind than rain, strong winds with gusts up to 44 mph. We drove into town to see what the harbor was like. There was a small sailboat that had dragged anchor and was sitting close to shore. The tide was out. We left and played with Bleu at Notter’s Pond.

23 February 2024 | St. Marys, GA

D4 Inside Seams

Day two of the dinghy build started out with me finishing wiring the hull bottoms together on the centerline of the bottom panels. This was much easier than the wiring of the chine edges of the bottom panels and the side panels.

15 February 2024 | St. Marys, GA

D4 Dinghy Day One

A Wharram Pahi 26 had been anchored in the river nearby the boatyard and was hauled out with the travel lift. I went around to look at it and talked to the owner couple. I was surprised that it had been built in Martinique in 1988. The boat is more than 30 years old.

11 February 2024 | St. Marys, GA

D4 Redux

The inflatable (deflatable) dinghy I had bought was deteriorating. It had bottom seams separating. It is a West Marine branded dinghy made out of PVC. HH66 is the adhesive to reattach the seams. A friend had a similar problem and bought the same adhesive. I was waiting to hear from him how it worked [...]

06 February 2024 | St. Marys, GA

The Clincher

We decided to go to Amelia Island for the day, probably to the beach. Our plan to cycle around on the Raleigh 20’s seemed like a bad idea, Bleu can’t keep up with a bicycle for very long and when he quits he quits. So we would walk, where?, Fort Clinch State Park. She has a forever pass for Florida [...]

Rot Never Sleeps

09 July 2011 | at the dock
thunderstorms, humid, rain
The following is a continuation of the restoration project. The picture is from the archives of 10 years ago. I finally got the old web site info from Scottie, my old webmaster. After this post, the next will be from the archive and we will repost the entire trip to the Florida Keys. Of course the current progress will be posted also, so it looks like it will be alternate posts from now and then from 10 years ago. Then we will recreate the voyage 10 years later, I hope with less calamity.
The idea to put in some shelves in the forward storage spaces seemed to be a breakthrough. Now the clutter of tools and toolboxes could be organized. The pilothouse would no longer be a toolshed. The galley would no longer be a paintlocker.
I wanted to make the shelves out of a sandwich similar to the way the deck was constructed. I decided to make them out of ¼ ply and a ½ foam core. This would make stiff shelves, but light weight. The shelves would rest on the exposed stringers of the hull planking. I measured tools, toolbags, and toolboxes to find the best spacing of shelves. Because the shapes were irregular trapezoids, I used the following technique to make patterns.
The rough outline of the shelf is measured and thin lath is cut to those dimensions. Then the lath is placed in the position of the shelf and carefully glued together with hot melt glue. The pattern is then removed and placed on the plywood, marked, and cut. The ply piece is test fitted and trimmed if necessary. It is then glued to the foam with contact cement and the foam is trimmed to the ply perimeter and beveled to the angle of the hull sides. Next the foam/ply piece is used to mark the second piece of ply which is cut out and glued to the other side of the foam. The front of the shelf is trimmed with some aluminum angle I had on hand which stiffens the edge and also forms a lip to keep stuff from sliding off the shelf.
There are three shelves in each storage space, one forward and two aft of the hatch. They add about 15 square feet of storage to each storage space.
After gluing the shelves in place, after they were painted, I had to repair the hatch on the port hull storage space. It was demolished when a power boat went by and it was open. The wake threw the catamaran up and down and sideways at the dock and the hatch cover got caught against a piling. It ripped the top of the hatch cover and blew out a piece of the frame near one of the hinges. This happened when I was out buying supplies at the local hardware store. I had a spare hatch cover and it turned out to be the same size, so I just unfastened the old broken hatch and attached the replacement. It needed a coat of paint, but looked good as new. I threw out the old hatch and a set of 3 washboards that came out of the storage spaces. Washboards slide into the hatchway, which is like a keystone shape, and stack one atop the other to close the hatch opening. The sliding hatch cover usually has a flat tang that protrudes through the top washboard and is used to lock the hatch. The sliding part of the hatch can't be moved because of the lock, and the washboards can't be lifted out of the opening because the sliding hatch is above them. I had replaced the top washboard on each of the 3 hatches with duplicates made out of lexan to let more light into the space below.
Another repair part was the beam cover I removed to run the port navigation light wiring. The beam sits in a trough in front of the cabin and a cover fits over the trough. It matches the shape of the deck and bolts down into place and keeps water out of the beam trough. The trough has big bolts that come up from below and the beam has brackets that fit the bolts and that is how the hulls are secured together. There are large rubber bushings to allow a tiny bit of movement so that the boat is not 100 percent rigid, it can flex a little bit. It is the designer's solution to the problem of preventing stress cracks in a structure that has to endure storm waves that wrack the boat hulls.
The beam cover had a soft spot where I had previously replaced a soft spot with a patch. Apparently the moisture had progressed even further and now when I gouged out the soft wood, I realized it would be easier to replace the whole thing. It would set me back another few days, but I'm glad I found it now. Also, I could install a pair of ventilators. Normally ventilators are installed on a “dorade box”. These are named from the yacht Dorade that first had them. It is a box on deck that has an opening on top for the ventilator. There are some baffles inside so air can easily get to the vents that lead below to the cabin, but any water that washes down the ventilator runs out through some drain holes. My idea is to take the whole beam trough and turn it into a huge dorade box. Put a couple of ventilators on the beam cover, add some vents into the cabin from the trough, and allow water to escape over the side.
After I run the navigation light wires through the beam trough to the center of the boat to hook them up with the nav light circuit, I should open up the starboard beam cover on the other hull and run that nav light wire and also check that that beam cover is not soft.
Let's skip ahead a couple of days as the beam cover is completed. It looked nice with the two ventilators. The original was made the same time as the beam cover between the port storage space and the twin bunk. I pulled up that cover and it started to fall apart. Oh no, did I have to make another beam cover? It was in bad shape, but salvageable. I glued it back together with a zillion clamps to force the pieces of wood back to where they belonged. The next morning it was sanded and cleaned, the holes for the new ventilators were cut, ventilators installed, and two coats of arctic white paint. It looked like new.
On the port hull, the other two forward beam covers were pulled up and inspected. I couldn't believe how much debris had collected under them. Mostly stuff from trees, old leaves and catkins. I vacuumed them up along with spiders and dirt. The covers had encrusted dirt that had to be scrubbed off. Holes were cut for the ventilators and then the surfaces were sanded. The ventilators were mounted and the covers were painted. The starboard navigation light wiring was still in place, but it seemed to run behind a deck support bracket and didn't come out on the other side. I removed the old wire and cut it off flush with the bracket.
While I was looking at wire to run the nav lights, I remembered the deck table forward section needed a quick repair. It had fractured along a glue line and just needed regluing. When I removed it, I noticed below it the mast base had a discoloration and as I poked around it appeared that the base of the mast had some rot. This was a serious problem and needed immediate repair. There were thunderstorms that day, so I did the quick deck table repair and then tried to probe the rotten wood of the mast. It was pretty bad. The mast was settling as the base got soft. The task was to raise the mast a little bit, remove the rotted wood, replace it with good wood, and make sure it was all glued and screwed together with strength.
I was able to use the porta power to lift the mast a fraction of an inch. Wood was removed with an air grinder with a rasp bit and the multi tool with the wood blade. The multi tool was more effective. The mast was a typical box section with about 3 layers. One layer was removed from the starboard side up to about 1 foot. A new piece of wood was butted into the space. The idea was to add one piece at a time and restore the integrity of the mast base.
Next will be a post from the archives from 10 years ago, then we will continue the mast repair.
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