Kaimusailing

The weather forecast down in St. Marys, Georgia, is a ridiculous heat index of 124. It will be a while before we can return to the project there, when the summer heat subsides.
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In the mean time, I purchased a C&C 24 sloop from a local charity, and the money goes to a good cause. I was unable to do much with the boat because of the hot weather and also little wind. It had a dead battery which had been a Honda car battery at one time, maybe 10 years ago. It's replacement was costly, a deep cycle marine battery.
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A day came that was cooler and a wind forecast of 10 from the North. I had been itching to go sailing for too long. This little boat has no motor, but lots of sails, so I tried the usual tricks to get her out of the slip, out of the marina, and into the Magothy River.
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I was happy that the wind had not yet settled in and I tried to sail the boat out, main only, while grabbing things with the boathook, shoving off pilings, and paddling with a brand new Walmart kayak paddle. This took a while. The intermittent wind was something like 0-5 and mostly 0.
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I knew the Magothy had shallows, so I was careful to follow local craft. I was too busy to leave the helm and raise the genoa, so I poked along at .01 knot under main alone. This was fortunate because when I sailed off along a row of docks, unwisely reasoning that the boats that dock there must need some depth, I ran aground. The usual chinese fire drill ensued, but I was saved by a couple of kayakers who were young and able. They paddled off with the anchor and tossed it about 100 feet to windward. I was able to kedge off, but now I was wary that shallows could turn up just about anywhere.
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The wind pattern was light and variable. At a particularly dead interval I ran back and forth to the bow and clipped on the light air genoa. It seems this boat has a racing inventory of sails with a light main and genoa, and a heavier main and genoa. I had the light main on and was clipping on the light genoa. A small boat like this is easy to hop about and handle the sails. The sails are smallish and the hoist is only about 30 feet. The fin keel makes the boat twitchy. A tillermaster type of autopilot would help. Tying off the tiller works for a short time, enough to get some sail work done.
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Black Hole Creek was on the opposite shore and I well remember trying to sail out of there and grounding on the spit that comes almost all the way across to this shore. I worked the boat along the North shore of the Magothy, but there was little wind and it actually died completely before I had gone a mile.
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I've learned to be patient. The wind will blow again someday. Maybe even today. When it did put out a transient puff, I hopped about getting the sails organized to use it, but most of the time the little puff died before I could fill the sails. I sat for 3 hours , contemplating things.
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A bigger puff would come in and we'd go about a 1/4 mile in not too long a time, then sit after the puff ended. I noticed the boat would keep moving a bit even when there was no detectable wind. The second grounding happened near daymark 6. Yes it warned of shallow water, but it was shallow well toward the channel side of the marker. I passing powerboater pulled me away from all that and left me to continue to drift along.
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It seemed to take forever to get along that shore toward the mouth of the Magothy and out into the Bay. As I got closer to the Bay I thought the wind was steadier and maybe stronger. Still it was at most 5 knots and most of the time a lot less. We headed out the buoys marking the entrance and now had to work to windward. The wind was coming from NNE, so we could go East right out to the shipping channel, and then North, up to Bodkin Point. I found the boat would easily do 90 degree tacking angles. If you tacked on the wind shifts, it was less.
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The wind on the Bay was also light and fluky, but it settle in a bit and we were making maybe 3 1/2 knots at times. Considering the conditions, it was wonderful that we made it to the Bay at all. This boat does a good job of converting wind pressure into forward progress.
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Memories of sailing my Coronado 34 sloop came back to me. It was a bigger boat, but the feel is the same. There is a groove that happens when the sails are trimmed correctly for that point of sail. Of course Kaimu would sail lower and faster, but a good monohull windward boat seems to sail right into the eye of the wind.
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That kind of eye sailing wind didn't come up, just a fluky light wind from the NE, but when it came time to tack to clear the spit off Bodkin Point, the wind came from the ESE and we didn't have to tack. I sailed on past the layline to Bodkin Inlet to allow a false jibe to clear the main topping lift that was hung up on something up on the sail. Batten pockets?.
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We turned for the inlet and sailed wing and wing. Boatspeed was about 2 knots. It felt a lot better than 0 knots, becalmed. The sun went down and I took pictures, one of which is posted with this.
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I knew that the wind would be very low inside the inlet and probably not come from the NE. As it grew dark I had to illuminate the sail using the smart phone flashlight app so that approaching boats could see us. One yelled out, "Turn on your lights or get out of the channel." I would get if I could. I think the lights will be available after the new battery is installed.
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At 0030 hours I had managed to finally anchor the little sloop near our docks. The last part was the hardest with no wind and very slow. Propulsion was by strenuous paddling with an 8 foot kayak paddle that barely moved the boat. The photo is sunset over Bodkin Point just before we entered at dusk. (photo will be added when sailblogs fixes that function).