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. |
17 April 2024 | St Marys, GA
Dinghy Skeg
I was suffering with what seemed like a cold and also had allergy symptoms. I awoke and felt fine. The green pollen that was coating everything was gone. Maybe it will return.
07 April 2024 | St. Marys, GA
Clammy Hands
Items came in from TEMU, the Chinese cut rate retailer. One was a nice little drone that cost about twelve and a half dollars. It looked like an easy thing to play with while I coughed and sneezed. I was fighting a summer cold, even though it is not summer elsewhere, it seems like it here. A nice [...]
02 April 2024 | St. Marys, GA
Sun Doggie
After laminating the cedar strips onto the gunwales of the dinghy I found the screws I used wouldn’t come out. The epoxy had seized them. The screw heads were stripped so I cut a straight slot in the heads with the cut off wheel. The cedar smoked when the screw heads got red hot. I could remove [...]
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.
Fairing Better
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The fairing method that didn’t work left me rethinking the procedure I used. I was more or less trying to use the phenolic microsphere mix that was suggested, a mix of mostly microspheres with a little dash of silica. The problem is that for a mix wet enough to spread on smoothly, it will sag on vertical surfaces. For instance, a screw hole with fairing mix troweled over, a depression will form as the mix starts to sag out of the hole, then leaves a lump on the bottom edge of the hole. When the mix is mixed drier, it will not trowel on smoothly, leaves a rough crumbly surface, and the edges of the troweled patch are not smooth and fair. If you take a mix of colloidal silica that is fairly stiff, it will trowel on smoothly and fair smoothly. It will be awful to sand after it cures, it is very hard.
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My first step of troweling on a microsphere mix with a toothed trowel is OK, the microsphere mix sands easily and I’m not trying to make a sag free mix anyway. After initial sanding of the toothed surface, a second application of the same microsphere mix with a straight edged trowel goes on OK and now I am making it as fair as I can, accepting that it will have some rough spots, pinholes, and other problems due to the lack of enough silica in the mix. Now comes the new experimental third step. The surface is sanded as fair and smooth as possible with no attempts to sand out any divots and a third application of mix is made with the mix at 50/50 microsperes and silica. This goes on very smoothly, doesn’t sag, and because the surface is already mostly fair, there is little sanding of the result after it cures. It is difficult to sand, but if it is carefully spread, there will be almost no sanding required.
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The picture is of the port stem post where this technique was tried first. The surface is smooth and fair with only a few striations from the edge of the trowel or bits of grit in the mix.
