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.
BFB
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The flat bottom requires a leeboard or centerboard to keep it from sliding sideways under sail. Paddling of course doesn’t require a board and a trampoline or platform on the outriggers isn’t necessary either.
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I had already developed a hull shape in delftship, a design application, and tweaked it to get a reduced volume bow and nearly vertical sides with just a bit of flare at midships to provide a little more room in the hull there. The earlier sharpie hulled prototype used an inverted bow constructed by the tortured ply process, but now I want to remove any stress from the hull components. Stress can make the hull stiffer, but it can make it more fragile. If you try to cut a limp piece of rope, it is more difficult than cutting one under tension. The same is true for hull planking.
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The bow volume is reduced by adding tumblehome to the hull sides going forward. This results in a reverse rake to the bow, like the old fashioned destroyers. Where the inverted bow had no deck, just a sharp ridge, the destroyer bow can have a small flat deck, much more useful.
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My nickname for this canoe is “BFB”, maximum bang for minimum buck, and not just in expense, but minimum build difficulty and minimum of maintenance. The goal is car topper weight for any of the components.
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A review of Michael Schacht’s website, proafile, gave me the latest on current proa design. There was a video of a French proa with a sharpie hull, sailing along at a good pace, making a substantial bow wave, but there were three crew on board.
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The picture is the delftship 3D image of the proa hull. It is simple but will have the same good qualities that the sharpie bottomed hull of two years ago had.
