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. |
23 April 2024 | St Marys, GA
D4 Launchie
The laptop pooped the bed, so I have to scurry around with alternatives. Not as bad as typing on the phone.
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.
Foredeck Work
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Kaimu’s foredecks, starting from each bow, were sanded and primed with unthickened epoxy, as far back as beam #1. Then a coat of arctic white was applied. The procedure now seems to be sand the surface early, put a coat of epoxy on it, then after lunch put a coat of paint on it. This should give a tenacious grip of the paint to the epoxy.
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Work on the foredeck space between beams 1 and 2 was next. The belt sander was chewing up 36 grit sanding belts at a rate of one every 10 minutes. I was out of sanding belts, so it was off to Lowe’s to get a 5 pack of 40 grit belts. These lasted longer than the 36 grit belts that had come from Harbor Freight. I was being more careful with the sander and removing the belt about every 5 minutes and grinding off some gunk on the bottom of the sander. The gunk was gray and looked a lot like Petit 2000 barrier coat, but it was probably paint dust that melted together. It formed globs on the sander’s rollers and had to be scraped off with a knife. I think this gunk was what damaged the 36 grit belts.
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The foredecks were looking pretty beat up after this attack with the belt sander. It exposed layers of built up paint, fairing, glass, and epoxy. Some spots were down to bare wood, so I primed them with unthickened epoxy. My estimate that I could complete the foredecks, cabin front, back, and inboard sides, before the end of the month now looks overly optimistic. It looks like we will go into April at least a week on this stage of the project. The primed spots now received a layer of thickened epoxy, 50:50 microballoons and “glue hard”. This mixture is light and strong with some milled glass fibers in the glue hard mix. The photo is of the starboard foredeck between beams #1 and #2. Next it will be sanded smooth, primed with epoxy again, and coated with arctic white.
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