Kaimusailing

The actual temperature, in the shade, hit 105 in the boatyard. Officially it was 118 heat index and 98 at Point Peter, right around the corner. It was the humidity that made it impossible to contemplate physical labor, but in spite of the exodus of yardbirds to other cooler climates, there still remained a few, not like me, a few who were working, doing hard physical labor, to get their boats back in service.
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One captain said it was folly to launch a boat this time of year, in the heat, in the hurricane season. I suspect he has a clandestine air conditioning unit on his boat, back in the corner of the boatyard.
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This time last year I was up in Maryland, preparing to sail the little C&C 24 down. I knew better than to set sail too early and end up in the gulag with the high heat index. I ended up down here the end of September and then hurricane Matthew hit the first week of October.
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Before Matthew came through there was Hermione which passed offshore of the Chesapeake the day before I set sail. That would be around Sept. 1 or the very end of August, so we are still a couple weeks away from that hurricane window of last year. I would say it is OK to launch now if you head north right away. You can go inland if something is coming up the coast, or keep going. It certainly isn’t pleasant here right now and won’t be for about a month or so.
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I tried to make another panorama, this one of sunset on Mauna Loa, and it came out OK, so I sent the full size panorama to my sister in law in Hawaii, who gave us an excellent time in Honolulu. The pixel count on that one is almost 6000 horizontally, so it is a high res image, about 2 megs, and would print out well in a large format. My 11X17 printer wouldn’t do it justice. It was shot at a high ISO, but the image doesn’t seem to have any graininess or noise. The edges are sharp and the panoramic boundary between the two parent shots is very hard to find. I guess my photo ops here in the swamp are more limited, but there is a solar eclipse headed our way. Hmm.
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I’m ready to start some work on the boats, but aiming to keep out of the sun, and also limit myself to little projects that don’t require a lot of physical exertion. So, I bought a plank of poplar wood at the local home improvement store to make a rudder for the outrigger canoe.
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This reminds me that at 18 feet, my canoe would be too long for Boot Key Harbor, where Captain Webb Chiles reports that every boat moored there has to have a holding tank and a permanent installed head. The limit at the dinghy dock is 14 feet, so that is the kapu for the outrigger canoe, too long. A smaller sailing boat will ususally have porta-pottie, and when I look at the application for anything there, a mooring ball, anchorage, or to use the dinghy dock, the application form has provisions for “portable toilet”, as well as composting heads, etc. But in the rules and regulations they stipulate that you must have a permanent head with a holding tank. Obviously it is an example of bureaucrat A writing up the categories in the application form, and laywer B writing up the wording in the rules and regulations. Lawyer B has never crapped in an old oaken bucket, which is an example of what is wrong with this country.
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My plan to make two rudder/daggerboards hit a snag when I miscalculated and only added up the half breadths (hey, that’s a word) instead of the full thicknesses of the foil. I ended up buying enough wood to make only 1 board, and so I will do that. It’s more efficient to make 2 boards at the same time, but in this heat I can poke along and make one board and see how it comes out.