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 [...]

Georgia Bugs

30 January 2018 | st marys, ga
Capn Andy/chilly winter
I was afraid that the horrible cold of January would continue and give us a much longer and colder winter than ordinary. It has apparently let up, and what feels like mild weather now is more like normal winter weather here at the Georgia/Florida border. Still too cold for epoxy work, or that is the excuse I use.
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My birthday came up suddenly and I received a nice gift from my younger daughter, a stuffed toy that she created and she calls them Puffington Pals. They are cute and everyone smiles when they see it. My older daughter texted me from England about sending me a Gopro Hero camera, but I said I wanted to do a little research on that first. I had been thinking about aerial photography with a drone and a Gopro or similar camera. So I began looking at drones and cameras and what people were using.
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The Gopro Hero is considered the benchmark of action cameras, but the field is jam packed with many many alternatives, and some that are on par or even better than the Gopro. The drone marketplace is also large with many choices. I decided to get a popular drone called MJX Bugs 3. It does not have autonomous flight in any way, it is manual control by the operator only. It also was only $38 dollars with my credit card discount, normally it is about $65 and up.
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In the camera department I looked at the Gopro Session which is the lightest Gopro action camera, so it would be more easily lifted by the drone. There are many You Tube videos of action cameras and comparisons, and even one with the Bugs 3 drone carrying a camera called ThiEYE i60e. I could see the video that was shot by that camera with that drone and I figured I could follow suit. There are comparison videos of the i60e side by side with the Gopro Hero and there's not much to choose from between the two, as shown on compressed You Tube video.
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There are also videos of the high end of aerial photography using expensive and complicated octo-copters and cameras like the Canon EOS (no, mine is older and doesn't shoot video). These are machines with various autonomous flight systems, some maintain altitude, some have separate controls for the copter operator and the photographer. The cameras are configured something like the steadicam, having stabilization and a remote controlled gimbal. The prices for these drones start right at about a thousand dollars and go up to around 15,000. One was an octo-copter with eight twin motors that each had a prop above and below, 16 propellers. It is possible to get reasonably good video from the lower end drones and cameras but the platform won't be as steady and resolution and noise and distortion can creep into the camera's video.
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I ordered the drone on the weekend and it arrived on Monday. It had to be assembled and its battery charged. When the light turned green on the charger is was a green light for me to go out and fly the chopper. It was a warmer or less cold afternoon, so there were more of the yardbirds gathered around the communal area and I put on an air show for them. Some air shows have tragic accidents, explosions, and wrecked aircraft, but this one had commentary disrespectful of the captain and pilot. It was very tricky just to get the thing off the ground, but then it would quickly resist any attempts at control, a wild whirring device with four blades, made in China. Flight time is thankfully limited by the battery expiring after 5-10 minutes. The chopper ended up on the roof once, sliding off to the ground, and only needing to be reset to resume its torture. Don't fly it into those stanchions someone exclaimed as I did just that, and still the little monster was ready for more. It ended up on its back, rotor blades digging the gravel of the boatyard, and finally it was spent, battery warnings coming from the controller and flashing lights on the drone.
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I needed some flight training without wrecking a real aircraft, so I found an app to put on my android phone that would mimic the controls of the drone and I could fly a drone-like icon. When I crashed it, the phone would display, in red, the results of the crash, broken rotors, etc.
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It helped. By my fourth session I could hover the craft and only crash it about a dozen times in 10 minutes. When I was flying it successfully there was no one around to compliment me. The image is from the internet of the drone, but with a different camera.
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