Kaimusailing

I wasn't only shaking down the boat, I was shaking down the captain. When the mast went over last year, it was a captain's blunder that did it, a result of bad practice in bad conditions. The bad conditions included hypothermia late at night, fatigue, and a vicious chop that relentlessly challenged the boat. I really pushed it too far and paid for it. Now I have to evaluate if I can operate the boat singlehanded or not.
.
The Wharram boat is great for shorthanded sailing. It feels like a much larger vessel. The wide stance of the catamaran hulls doesn't roll back and forth. The long vee'd hulls keep the vessel on track like a train on rails. There is time for the shorthanded skipper to leave the helm and take care of the sails, go down into the galley and get some food, check navigation down in the pilothouse, or just sit on his duff at the helm. If you can't handle that, then maybe you'll need extra crew.
.
I had great difficulty sheeting in the genoa in only about 10 knots of wind. Later I found the staysail sheet which was not in use had jammed behind the turning block. This put the brakes on the genoa sheet. The staysail sheet is led from a block that is inboard at the cabin top edge, then around the turning block, then through a rope clutch to the winch. The genoa sheet is led through the lead block on the genoa track more or less in the middle of the cabin top, then around the turning block and through a rope clutch to the winch. This way either sheet can be released and trimmed using the winch, then latched with the rope clutch. The turning block is a double sheave type to handle both sheets at once. After this shakedown I changed which sheave each sheet was riding on to reduce the chance of jamming a loose sheet in the turning block.
.
The genoa had rolled up badly on the roller furler exposing sailcloth in between bands of the sunbrella protective fabric. Normally the sunbrella overlaps itself and no sailcloth is exposed to U/V. I rerolled it and found the genoa sheet needs to be led higher than normal to keep the sunbrella properly overlapped. I think this only happens in lighter winds and is not a new problem due to the mast installation.
.
The remaining problem during the shakedown was mainsheet fouling on the sailomat. Other than being more careful with the mainsheet, there is no way to keep this from happening. Perhaps a solution to the problem will pop up after some more thought.
.
The outrigger sailing canoes have been neglected and I took some time to rip about 1/3 of the pentroof deck off the ama, or outrigger float. For some reason part of the deck started to delaminate, probably due to sanding off some of the protective epoxy, and then while working on the stack pack sail cover, the main boom dropped onto the ama. It was on board Kaimu and was in the wrong spot at the wrong time.
.
I had been using a technique of light coating of epoxy to prime the wood, then two coats on top of that. This might be inadequate. Russell Brown in his epoxy book says to use two prime coats, then two coats of thickened epoxy on top. Kaptain Kris says to use even more coats along with light fiberglass.
.
The Kiribati style tortured ply canoe hull had been damaged way back when it was just completed. A gust of wind blew it off the sawhorses and it struck something that punctured the hull just below the waterline, below the bonded in floor. It was a small hole, but over time moisture made its way into the ply laminations and the area of damage increased to a couple square feet. There were other spots on the hull where ply was starting to deteriorate, but they could be rebonded the same way I rescued two of the old deflatable dinghy floorboards. Infuse epoxy into the delamination and apply pressure to force the laminations back together.
.
Patches were cut out of plywood and along with butt blocks 3” wide. There was one large patch on the side of the tortured ply canoe and three small ones on the ama deck. This resulted in a total of 15 pieces of plywood. They were primed and small delaminated edges of the ama deck were relaminated with epoxy.
.
The photo is the large patch on the canoe and butt blocks being sized to form a flange for the patch.