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.
21 March 2024 | St. Marys, GA
01 March 2024 | St. Marys, GA
23 February 2024 | St. Marys, GA
15 February 2024 | St. Marys, GA
11 February 2024 | St. Marys, GA
06 February 2024 | St. Marys, GA
26 January 2024 | St. Marys, GA
14 January 2024 | St. Marys, GA
09 January 2024 | St Marys, GA
23 December 2023 | St Marys, GA
10 December 2023 | St Marys, GA
25 November 2023 | St. Marys, GA
17 November 2023 | St. Marys, GA
17 November 2023 | Somers Cove Marina, Crisfield, MD
03 November 2023 | Somers Cove Marina, Crisfield, MD
26 October 2023 | Somers Cove Marina, Crisfield, MD
17 October 2023 | Somers Cove Marina, Crisfield, MD
11 October 2023 | Somers Cove Marina, Crisfield, MD
04 October 2023 | Alice B. Tawes, McReady Pavilion, Crisfield, Maryland Eastern Shore
03 October 2023 | Alice B. Tawes, McReady Pavilion, Crisfield, Maryland Eastern Shore
Recent Blog Posts
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.

11 February 2024 | St. Marys, GA

D4 Redux

The inflatable (deflatable) dinghy I had bought was deteriorating. It had bottom seams separating. It is a West Marine branded dinghy made out of PVC. HH66 is the adhesive to reattach the seams. A friend had a similar problem and bought the same adhesive. I was waiting to hear from him how it worked [...]

06 February 2024 | St. Marys, GA

The Clincher

We decided to go to Amelia Island for the day, probably to the beach. Our plan to cycle around on the Raleigh 20’s seemed like a bad idea, Bleu can’t keep up with a bicycle for very long and when he quits he quits. So we would walk, where?, Fort Clinch State Park. She has a forever pass for Florida [...]

Pure Sine Wave

19 June 2017 | st marys, ga
Capn Andy/100 degrees F.
I missed out on the final race of the Louis Vuitton competition and it was the Kiwi’s who seemed to have come up with the boat speed to finish off the Swede’s who had looked so fast. The Swede’s had been the only team to dominate Oracle in the round robin series. The talk is that Iain Percy will find a new job as tactician with Ben Ainslie’s next challenge. That would be formidable.
.
The carburetor work continued with an attempt at getting the complicated linkage sorted out. There is still a fuel input spigot to repair on carburetor #2 or #3, plus the choke arm on #3 needs to be firmly attached to its chewed up choke butterfly shaft, probably by bedding it with epoxy thickened with glass fibers.
.
The tilt solenoid was replaced but the tilt function was still not operative. I confirmed the motor turned a bit when connected to the battery directly, but then it would not do anything more. The solenoid clicks when activated by jumper clip to voltage available in the motor, but the switches on the remote and motor chassis don’t activate the trim/tilt. They feel funny, like they are corroded inside, so removing the tilt switch from the chassis and ohming it shows that there is no internal continuity, probably the sea has found another victim. The switch on the remote control is more difficult to remove and test, plus there is a lot of wire between it and the motor. It might be still good, but I ordered a replacement for both switches and both came at a price of about $30.
.
Further troubleshooting of the tilt mechanism means manually hoisting the engine up into its trailing mode. I have to verify I am doing the right things to get it up, it is possible to break more than I fix. My service manuals for the engine are probably dissolved in seawater, so I ordered a pdf manual on CD for about $15. These nickel and dime expenditures will add up to some money, but a new engine is around $6000.
.
Work has to be organized around the rain schedule. It is that time of year with humid weather and daily thunderstorms. If I uncover my work tables, the thunderstorms will strike. If I sit around doing other things, the work will sit there and I will start to feel guilty, then uncovering my work tables.
.
There is a fellow on the Wharram builders web site putting his boat up for sale following his house burning down. The boat is not totally complete, but he has new sails that have never been exposed to the sun, and most of the boat is unaffected by the house fire. He needs to sell it and now there is an opportunity for a builder to get a nearly complete project for a bargain from someone who will be glad to get some cash to start over.
.
I have often written that building your own boat from scratch is probably the worst way to get a boat. It is economically unfeasible, and the sweat equity these days will not return anything, and a professionally built boat from a manufacturer will be well built and when these boats come on the market after 10-15 years if use, the price these days is very attractive. Many people turn their noses up on the Wharram wooden catamarans, so the resale value is low. We who sail Wharrams know they are very good boats, not marina queens, but good solid boats when built to plan. You have to know what you will be happy with and then make your choice.
.
There were a couple of smaller monohulls available both in this area (Northern Florida and Southern Georgia) and on Chesapeake Bay, for about $25k that were obviously well maintained and suitable for coastal cruising, or maybe even more. Captain Radio Bill sends us his positions every day and sometimes includes a short message. He is up Northeast of Bermuda on about the same latitude as New York, going North to get more wind. He reports a proud 24 hour mark of 107 miles. For his little overladen Triton, that is good going.
.
My friend Kristian who is about to launch his traditional ketch, has French apprehensions about his prospects. I said to him it will all be resolved once he is at sea. I am probably the opposite and don’t have as many apprehensions, and I think that gives me more energy to get into more trouble. He will probably not get into trouble, except worrying.
.
Returning to the tilt system I looked online and eventually found someone who was working on my model, the T50TLRX. I found out that there was no bleed screw, which I had been looking for, and the one fact that had escaped me, to add hydraulic fluid to the pump reservoir while it is pumping the motor into the raised position. The electrical control of the pump was sorted out, except for the switches on the remote control and motor housing, by going around with a meter and confirming voltage and current from the battery to the start solenoid, where it is passed on the the tilt solenoid. Likewise, the ground path is just as important, so suspicious looking connections were wire brushed. The hydraulic procedure would seem to add enough fluid while the motor was rising, but the fluid foams inside the system and it needs to rest for a while, then continue, it will take more fluid.
.
The AGM batteries came in, finally, after about 2 weeks of transit by truck from Nevada. They weigh about 65 lbs. each, so it was a chore to hoist them up on deck and get them down into the galley/dinette where they were installed under the dinette seats. When I connected the solar charge controller and its monitor, I went by the book. I disconnected the solar panels, then moved the charge cables from the temporary battery to the new battery bank. At this point the monitor read the battery voltage - 13 volts. Then the solar panels were connected and strangely, the voltage went up to 30 volts and after that the monitor was reading the same on volts or amps, and the reading was way above the actual charge voltage. I disconnected the monitor from the charge controller and reconnected everything. Now the charge controller was working normally and the batteries were brought up to the high 13 volt range. Voltage readings taken before, during, and after, showed that the charge controller had been operating normally all along, but the monitor had bit the dust. A new monitor was ordered for about $25, it is model SM25000 made by Sunsei, and it mates perfectly with the CC25000 charge controller. I was anxious to see what amperage the new batteries were accepting, but that will have to wait about a week when the new monitor comes in.
.
The Tiger Claw inverter was connected an now the microwave oven in the galley is on ship’s power. The refrigerator that I bought last year for use in the boatyard, which found a place in the pilothouse, the only place where it would fit, was also put on inverter power. The batteries sagged to around 12.6 volts for a bit, then charged right up to 13.4. We are independent of the boatyard’s electricity.
.
This inverter comes from China, of course, and I bought it after much research. It produces pure sine wave power up to 1500 watts. The photo is of the top of the inverter. The batteries that came in from Nevada are also Chinese. Their total capacity is 400 amp hours which converts to 5200 watt hours at 13 volts. It is recommended not load the batteries more than about 1500 watt hours per day, but that does not include the excess solar power available during daylight. The panels put out at maximum about 260 watts at 13 volts. They are rated at 344 watts at maximum power point, which is somewhere around 17.5 volts, but we are not trying to get every last bit of power from them.
Comments

About & Links

SailBlogs Groups