Kaimusailing

There's a saying that many of our modern conveniences would be magic to the stone age. What is more like magic to me is how things that fail while underway work flawlessly in port.
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And in port, the old little generator which I would describe as “dirt simple”, didn't run. I was at anchor, out of power due to overusing my solar and batteries. The little generator hadn't been used in a long time, at least I couldn't remember the last time it was used, and that long time gets shorter as I get older, but it is a very long time. It was a dead lump of Chinese cast iron culture. Rusty sparkplug. Gas/sludge tank. 2 stroke, i.e. “Dead”. Pulling and re-pulling the pull-start-cord was more torture for my rebuilt shoulder. I recalled stories of dirt track racers resurrecting their 2 stroke motors in the mud. This motor didn't work on deck in the sunshine, nice day.
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This failure was the guillotine to the work progress. No inverter from the depleted batteries, no shore power out anchored in mother nature, and no power from the little two stroke generator. Fail, fail, and fail. Varnish and wait.
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On my way back to the dock I took the bad generator, looking like a broken toy, and had to move it around with a handtruck. It was too much to just grab and carry. I had removed the handy hand grip because it didn't fit under the deck table with it. The worst part was hauling it up the trail up to the boat shed. Uphill over a stone path.
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When I put the generator up on the work bench outside the shed, I gave the pull starter one more try and it ran. It spewed Chinese crud out of the exhaust, but it ran, sputtering at first, then settled into a steady not-too-loud drone. What? Failure at sea and success in port, but failure at anchor and success on shore? Am I cursed?
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Armed with the little generator, a daysail I was looking forward to was canceled, and replaced with a stint at grinding away at the black epoxy in the port hull. First the bunks were masked off and the chart table was covered in plastic.
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The chartroom sole and the aft part of the crawl space sole were sanded with the angle grinder with the 36 grit wheel. The generator stopped and somehow it started running again after me fiddling with spark plug wire, peering in the gas tank, and other ineffective attempts to get it running. The work shifted to the vanity area and a good amount was sanded before the generator quit again. Probably the total sanded in the port hull was just less than half of the total job. This time I removed the carburettor float bowl and couldn't get its bolt to mount it back again. The bolt was short and the beginning threads in the bolt hole were stripped. Soft aluminum. I could buy a new generator for $99 at Harbor Freight. Instead I found the correct thread (8MX1.0) bolt at ACE Hardware. It was about twice as long as the original at 12 mm, so the original was 5 or 6 mm long.
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Amazing, the generator now ran. Another problem is the spark plug connector made of spring wire is intermittent. This is bound to fail because the generator vibrates quite a bit. It is not too loud otherwise.
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The port hull sole was finished sanding and given a vacuum cleaning and a light coat of clear epoxy to seal the wood.
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While waiting for the epoxy to cure I surfed the internet and went back to the old reliable “Mother of All Maritime Links” page. It was a great place to find obscure sites, but now many of the links are broken. I did find a nice link to Griffiths hatches. This is a style of hatch for wooden boats that uses a sort of dorade to keep water out of the hatch. The hatches on Kaimu were redone about 10 years ago and are OK for coastal use, but the lexan pane is flat and kind of flexible. It's strong enough to stand on, but I'd hate to have a boarding sea test hatch integrity. A little crown to the lexan would give it stiffness and shed water better. Another project to add to the list.
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A couple of coats of urethane varnish to provide u/v protection finished off the port hull sole. The little generator fired up and the shop vac was used with a brush nozzle to try to clean up the remaining black epoxy sanding residue. I could have used the inverter and would have if the generator didn't start. The batteries in the starboard hull were up to 13.3VDC.
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After the sole was dry enough to walk on, the ladders (stairways) were varnished with nonskid. The nonskid powder is mixed into the varnish in a 1:4 ratio. It has to be mixed constantly while painting it on to keep the nonskid suspended in the mixture.
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The picture is of Kaimu at anchor in the Bodkin.