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 [...]

Progress at a Price

17 October 2009 | At the Dock, Still
Captn Andy/rainy
A couple of my sailing buddies invited me to go out over the last month or so. One of the weekends was just perfect, an ideal sailing break. Unfortunately I decided to keep on my mission of restoring those beams that had been invaded by rot.

How can a big solid piece of wood get reduced to mush so quickly? The problem is epoxy, which was thought to be the ultimate protector of wood, actually encapsulates the wood, and if water gets inside there is no escape. It's like a test tube full of wood, water, and of course, rot fungi spores. The wood can never dry out and quickly gets infiltrated with the strands of fungi which break down the strength of the wood until it is a soft mush.

The cure is to open up this closed system and dry it out, remove the punky bad wood, treat the rest with fungicide, and replace the gaps with something strong, such as epoxy/glass putty. I used chopped strands in epoxy, and made a thick slurry that was retained in the voids of the beam with flat smooth pieces of plastic air nailed into place. The result was a smooth surface and a beam that was stronger than when it was new. My supply of epoxy ran out, but that was a welcome break and more was on hand by the next weekend.

This was a difficult repair that brought me down to a low point. I wondered what else was going rotten in the boat. I had no idea that this sneaky weakening was taking place right under the deck. I had seen boats with this problem and assumed it was due to neglect. I've learned that wood has to be inspected frequently because this process takes place quickly and in the most inaccessable places, wherever rainwater will drain, even in the keel and the bilge. I felt that my boat, although it was stoutly built, could in fact be weakest in the most heavily built parts. I think subsequently that I've found the extent of the problem and now, after about 3 months of hard work, have turned the corner on this problem and can now continue on my earlier projects that were interrupted by this catastrophe.

I was reading some old archived issues of "Lattitudes and Attitudes" magazine that I had downloaded from the internet. Fortunately the magazine still is there on the internet, but the older issues are no longer available. I downloaded from about issue 35 to issue 109, about 4 gigs worth. They consist of cruising sailor's writings about the great beaches and islands they've found on their travels, and contributed to my depression about ever getting Kaimu back under sail. Then the editor, Bob Bitchin, began a series about the rebuild of his ketch "Lost Soul". He had been advertising the boat for quite a while with no takers and decided to rebuild his old boat instead of selling and buying new.

It didn't help to read of his splurging with work crews and tons of new equipment, attacking his sailing problems, while I was alone and picking away at my problems with much less resources. No freebies from the sailing industry. No low cost labor far from Southern California. A cold wet climate that continued to be an adversary.

I had a few weekends of success and had to work on several others and accept the extra money I needed, while losing still more time during the warm season. I kept at it though, and was driven by a fear that I would lose the boat if I didn't give my all. At some point I turned the corner. There was no longer that fear. I could begin to think again of the projects that I hadbegun the beginning of summer, before the beam problem reared up. It was still depressing to see the rest of the year slipping by while progress slowly continued after the beam delay.

Then I read more of Bob Bitchin's problems with his expensive rebuild, in spite of having industry contacts providing him with discount gear and discount labor because of his ability to advertise. Plus he had expert advice . He faced some of the same problems I had and now I understood what an ordeal he was going through. It helped me. I had someone else to point to and say, I don't got it so bad. In fact, he went through a year and a half of rebuild, and like me, had skipper friends invite him out, but couldn't go out and sail with a clear conscience when the boat is laid up in the yard and needs to be put back together right.

It all hit me on Columbus Day weekend. I did go to the boat and do a little bit, but mostly I stayed away. I needed to retrench and digest the situation. Look to the cold future and think of preparations for winter. Maybe we can take her out, but we've lost the opportunity for a summer sail. I spent time on the boat's computer, getting a bunch of Carribean maps to load correctly. I really didn't feel better about the summer's work, yet I felt I was looking forward and reassessing my future plans, maybe getting more realistic. We have to haul out sooner or later and do the bottom. I've sailed a lot in cold weather and maybe I'm fated to do it this fall. There is the difference between just going ahead with some carefully laid out plans and on the other hand taking a little while to see if there needs an adjustment to them. I took the time and let things sit. My instruments were magnetic and it seemed they affected the compass. My plan, months ago, to put them together in the helm station, was defective. I began to look again at the whole progect, stem to stern, and apply the cautious evaluation of what I had planned to do. Plans can then change. The best course is to not stick to anything previously planned. Make a new plan, plan #999. Go ahead and recalculate everything and while you're at it, be prepared to backtrack yet again. Get another noggin into the loop. Read more Lattitudes and Attitudes. There is a lot of information there, especially after about 35 issues.

The motto of that magazine is "Live your dream". But it is not a dream, it is a pragmatic and real work in progress. The object is to be sailing, maybe not to Antigua, but can't we just make it out of the slip and down to the bay?

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