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. |
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.
15 February 2024 | St. Marys, GA
D4 Dinghy Day One
A Wharram Pahi 26 had been anchored in the river nearby the boatyard and was hauled out with the travel lift. I went around to look at it and talked to the owner couple. I was surprised that it had been built in Martinique in 1988. The boat is more than 30 years old.
Chainplates
.
It took 2 days to mount the chainplates, way longer than I expected. One problem was a heat wave, hitting 98 on successive days. The chainplates have bolts that pass through them, then through the hull skin, and are secured with nylock nuts inside. This means a lot of climbing up on deck and then down in the hull to hold the nut with vice grips or a wrench, then going up and down outside to turn the bolt and tighten it.
.
Each bolt in the chainplates is a unique length. Some are passing through several backing pieces of wood, some are passing through a stringer, and all had to be checked for proper fit. My solution was to shove a lot of bolts into the chainplates to dry fit them, then climb up into the hulls and mark in a notebook which bolts are too long or too short. Then go back outside and rearrange the bolts until all were the right length.
.
Next was a trip to the hardware store to purchase 3/8-16 stainless steel nylock nuts, after spending considerable time looking for the ones I took off not that long ago. When the chainplates were removed, they took with them some of the glass surface of the hulls and some bedding compound, probably 5200. This all had to be ground off the chainplates. I found using the multitool with a scraper blade removed the most material the fastest, then a quick clean up with the angle grinder and flap disk made the chainplates look as good as new.
.
Carefully keeping the bolts in order and not mixing them up, Bed-it butyl caulking was wrapped around the bolts just under the head, then around the shank after they were inserted through the chainplate. Next came running up and down, in and out, putting fender washers and nylock nuts on each bolt, tightening it, then moving on to another.
.
The photo is of the starboard upper and lower shroud chainplates. Aft of them is a chainplate for the running backstay.
