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 [...]

To the Old Bahama Channel

07 November 2017 | Old Bahama Channel, Caribbean Sea
Capn Andy/85 degree Tradewinds
Although we want to sail, there is no wind, the sea is glass, the sunset is brilliant, we follow the waypoints around the east end of Republica Dominica, following our long route to Miami. We are using a 2 hour watch schedule which turns out to be a little too busy, each watchstander has to get up twice in the night and try to get to sleep twice. 2 on and 4 off, not enough time to get sleep. We talk about changing to 3 or 4 hour watches.
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In the morning I make a small pot of coffee and have a muffin and a bagel. Ron, going off watch, has a yogurt and I try one also. The two hours is over so quickly, I head back down to sleep. During the night I mistakenly got up when the genoa backwinded and began banging lead blocks on deck. I thought it was someone knocking on the stateroom door to wake me.
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We had a show and tell session about the chartplotter and I learned a trick from the skipper. The data display can be changed with the chartplotter’s rotary knob. The data is in 5 pages, each page dedicated to one theme, like engine, environment (mostly wind on this boat), navigation, sailing, and a page called rolling road (which is a steering aid). We have weather routing information that calls for changes to our preplanned route. One change is to pass Cabo Frances Viejo (Cape Old Frank according to Webb Chiles) at about 15 miles off, then pass Luperon at about 30 miles. Our arrival at these places will enhance our chance to pick up some wind. We can’t motor the whole way. We need wind to complete the greater portion of this trip.
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At lunch time I made a concoction with the mahi mahi. I sautéed onions and a piece of the fish in olive oil, then added them to a bowl of 2 beaten eggs, broke up the fish and onions, and poured the whole mess back into the pan, folded it over like an omelet, cut it into 3 pieces when it was done and laid them onto sandwich rolls.
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On our way to Old Man Frank the wind began to fill in. We raised the main and rolled out the genoa and soon we were able to kill the engine. We would have to run it or the generator from time to time to keep the batteries charged up. We thought the house bank of batteries were bad or had a bad battery or a bad cell. They seemed to never charge above 12.8 volts and when the charger was shut off they dropped to 12.4 or 12.3.
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I decided to make meat sauce with pasta for dinner and include julienne vegetables in the sauce. It turned out to be a disaster, not because the meal didn’t come out edible, but because the galley was lethal in a rough sea. Additionally it was hot below because skipper didn’t want to let any salt spray into the cabin. I flew into a tantrum when skipper said why don’t we reduce this motion in the boat so we can eat, so we can eat?, how about the guy down below in the heat who is getting thrown at the hot stove repeatedly?
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We were doing 3 hour watches so the watch stander would have 6 hours between watches to get some sleep. My first watch was the 8 to 11 PM. I would have to stand the 5 to 8 AM watch the next morning. It started out just fine with the boat making 7 and 8 knots with full working sail. We were on a long starboard reach of about 280 miles from Cape Old Frank to the separation zones off the Cuban coast at Cape Lucrecia. Our weather router suggestion to go 30 miles off the coast of DR at Luperon was abandoned. We had good wind and as long as it held out we could reel off the miles to the West.
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Skipper came on to relieve me of my watch. I went below and had a very difficult time in the starboard forward stateroom. The motion of the boat was extreme and it was like trying to go to sleep with someone tossing you back and forth to wake you up. Then I was actually dozing after about 2 hours but there were a series of staccato noises from up on deck. It took a couple of moments for me to realize that something was wrong up there. The noises were not the usual noises of sail adjustment or the mechanical noises of the engine, generator, or free wheeling sail drive, all of which add to the cacophony down below. It sounded like we were getting hit with a blast of wind and the sails and sheets were going wild.
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I came up the companionway and Ron was there and skipper was frozen at the wheel, wrestling with the helm while the boat laid over in a gust from a rain squall. I only had my cut-off shorts on, so the cold rain shocked me awake as I ran over to the port jib winch. This is not a disaster tale or one of great seamanship. The winch is electric. The lazy genoa sheet was on the other winch on the starboard side and skipper took up the slack to try to reduce the flapping of the sail. I cast off my sheet and wrapped the roller furling line around the winch and pushed a button. A couple of moments later the genoa was neatly rolled up on the roller furler.
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Next we attacked the main. It was too large for this wind so we dropped it a bit and took up on the 1st reefing line, then pulled it up tight again with the halyard. Ron got to grind the one winch in the cockpit that wasn’t electric, a tough job but somebody had to do it. Done, sail reduced, boat still on course, plus I had taken my shower without depleting the boat’s water supply.
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Ron was due to take over the watch and I was left to go back down to my bunk and try to get sleep. I ended up coming back on deck after a couple hours and relieved Ron early.
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The rain squalls were over and I began tweaking the sails. The battery bank was down to 11.8, so I ran the engine at 1500 turns and had the boat motor sailing in the 8 knot range. Our float plan called for an average of 6 knots.
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I began to feel very tired, made a pot of coffee and ate a bagel with peanut butter. The watch was only 3 hours long and skipper came up on deck at 8 AM. He had discovered diesel leaking from the starboard fuel tank, so he cleaned some of that up. It smelled of diesel down below. We talked about the rain squalls and how we were all tired and having trouble sleeping. I went below to try to sleep. I had 6 hours before I had to stand watch again.
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