Kaimusailing

Supplies were running low and I was contemplating renting a car to go shopping when one a boat owner I hadn’t seen in a few days came by and said he was going shopping and did I want to come along. He had been under the weather with a virus and did look pale, coughing a rough raspy cough. I of course tagged along and got the bread and eggs, etc. that I needed. He looked even worse when we got back.
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The front tire on the bicycle went flat and now I had to walk the distance across the boatyard to the wood shop or communal kitchen or for internet access. I wish it had happened before the shopping trip, I could have picked up a new inner tube.
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What I did pick up was a couple of 15 foot light duty extension cords from Walmart. My experiment with the new solar panel on top of the galley hatch had gone bad, the voltage wasn’t getting to the charge controller under the dinette seat. I was trying to use the old solar panel wiring which had splices and took a torturous route through the cabin top, through the cabinets over the galley stove, then into plastic conduit down to the dinette seat. One of the new extension cords was cut in half, the bare ends dressed for connection to the solar panels and charge controller and then plugged into the other extension cord to make a 30 foot long cord with bare ends on both ends. After it was hooked up to the panels and charge controller I was relieved to see the battery voltage quickly rise from 12.7 to 13.4.
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The new old Garmin GPS worked as far as getting a fix from satellites, but its mapping feature depends on downloading maps to it from a computer via a proprietary serial cable with the old fashioned D-nine connector on the computer end and a special Garmin connector on the end for the GPS. I tried to connect to it using a serial to USB adapter and it didn’t work. Then I tried to connect to the Toughbook which has the old fashioned D9 connector and it didn’t work. The whole rigmarole (previously written up) with Navigatrix and GPS came into play and I did some time consuming reading on others efforts to get various GPS devices to connect. In short, none of the schemes got any data from or to the old GPS. It’s a shame, because I’ve ordered maps to be downloaded and now have also ordered serial USB adapters, maybe it can be made to work.
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I was avoiding the work on the skeg slots in the keel. They involved laying on the ground and working underneath the aft sections of the keel. All the wood chips and sawdust come down at you and you roll around in them. I had already roughly cut the slots, 2 inches deep, and now had to shape them to the thickness of the skegs and smooth out the depth of the slots, eliminate the hills and valleys. I had thought of several different tools to use but ended up using a large 60 grit flap disk (7 inch diameter) on the little 4 1/2 inch angle grinder. This disk when new eats wood very quickly. Because the safety guard had to be removed to fit this larger disk on the grinder, it becomes a dangerous tool. The gyroscopic effect of the disk also makes quick movements of the grinder dangerous, it tries to twist and grind your wrist. The other tool was the three bladed Speedbore bit that I had used previously to drill the 2 inch deep holes in a line to make the slots. The problem was that the bit has a screw tip that pulls the bit into the wood. This effect is unpredictable, sometimes it tries to drill too aggressively, sometimes it acts like it won’t drill at all. Also the screw tip makes a little hole that has to be filled when the skeg is installed.
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The screw tip was cut off using the dremel tool. The work on the skeg slot went along reasonably well and at some point the skeg blank was fitted into the slot to see how well it fit and also to find how much to trim off. The picture is of the skeg blank which fits tightly enough to stay in the slot without any fasteners.
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A package arrived with “Instant Tom Yum Paste”, but it was not from a commercial supplier, it came from a lady who was selling home made condiments on Etsy, the eBay for arts and crafts. This paste was in a quart mason jar and I tasted it. It was spicy and I could tell it would be perfect for my soup that combined recipes of hot and sour soup and tom yum soup. I ran into the sick fellow and said I would make some spicy soup to help fight off his virus. I ended up having to cook without the sesame oil or special Chinese mushrooms that I would normally use. Instead of pork I used canned chicken breast. No tiger lily buds. The soup boiled in the galley on Kaimu, then was carried to the communal kitchen where three of us ate and told sea tales. The viruses were defeated.