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.
04 February 2025 | St. Marys, GA
22 January 2025 | St. Marys, GA
15 January 2025 | St. Marys, GA
06 January 2025 | St. Marys, GA
24 December 2024 | St. Marys, GA
16 December 2024 | St. Marys, GA
02 December 2024 | St. Marys, GA
17 November 2024 | St. Marys, GA
31 October 2024 | Somers Cove, Crisfield, MD
10 October 2024 | Somers Cove, Crisfield, MD
03 October 2024 | Somers Cove, Crisfield, MD
24 September 2024 | Somers Cove, Crisfield, MD
13 September 2024 | Somers Cove, Crisfield, MD
09 September 2024 | Somers Cove, Crisfield, MD
04 September 2024 | Somers Cove, Crisfield, MD
28 August 2024 | Somers Cove, Crisfield, MD
21 August 2024 | Belmar Beach, NJ
11 August 2024 | Somers Cove, Crisfield, MD
24 July 2024 | Somers Cove Marina, Crisfield, MD
08 July 2024 | Somers Cove Marina, Crisfield, MD
Recent Blog Posts
04 February 2025 | St. Marys, GA

Bisque with a Twist

The cold spell, arctic outburst, polar vortex, whatever, left me with pork chops and other ingredients for another batch of bean soup. After surviving potential ice skating on the swimming ladder and interminable snow melt dripping on me in my moldy freezing bunk, it was time to cautiously figure out [...]

22 January 2025 | St. Marys, GA

Snow Daze

I picked up a couple closet poles at Loews. These are the mast and sprit for the dinghy sail rig. Hardwood, probably oak. 1 3/8” diameter, 8 feet long. The plan from Maartens calls for 2” diameter spruce, but that is for an unstayed mast. I will be staying the mast on both the D4 dinghy here [...]

15 January 2025 | St. Marys, GA

Bean Soup I

If I am not taking pictures or writing it could be that I am depressed, but also there is a cycle in creativity, unless you are a manic artist. It seems sometimes that the extremists are the ones who get anything done. You have to play life like a hockey game, give it your all, then take a restful [...]

06 January 2025 | St. Marys, GA

Wishing for Sumner

The trouble with the pork chops is that they constituted a new form of substance, very good if you want to go on a diet without pork chops. Not so good for me. I don’t know how these things became tempered like steel, the spanish rice with them should have dissolved some of that iron.

24 December 2024 | St. Marys, GA

Shrimp Poke Bowl

I enjoyed the last of the stuffed cabbage. The fridge was now bare of leftovers except for bean soup which was in the little freezer. I decided to make a clam florentine soup derived from a shrimp recipe.

16 December 2024 | St. Marys, GA

Storm and Stuffed Cabbage

Not my clowns, not my circus. That is an amusing phrase, especially now. RFK jr in charge of health. The clowns come in, send in the clowns. It seems to be a recurring theme. If you put clowns in charge of government agencies, then you can take them down. I rant, but government is not a single [...]

The Electric Bosun's Chair

01 May 2010 | Bodkin Creek, at the dock
Captn Andy/pleasant
Some time ago I made an electric bosun's chair out of Harbor Freight parts and some oak planking. I found it much like a circus ride, fun after getting over the initial fears. There are always questions about the safety of an untested device that has never been used before, never been inspected by anyone else, and its use is inherently dangerous.

I tried it out after much procrastination, knowing how dangerous it might be. I decided to try it out close to the deck. Because I had multiple tasks to perform up the mast, I decide to also prepare for them and attach a bucket with tools and epoxy and paint. Once I lifted off the deck and got over my initial fears I found it to be a fun tool to run up the mast.

I decided to run up to the spreaders and see how it goes. Then I continued right up the mast, I was free of gravity and could work on the mast without expending energy hoisting myself up as I had done before.

I was the only one to use this device, even though I proudly announced to my follow do-it-yourselfers how it worked and how great it was. No one ever asked to use it. They usually had another crew hoist them up using the anchor windlass. Sometimes it's hard to find someone to help, especially if the work will take some time. Also, you are entrusting your life to your windlass and the person handling it.

Captain Ed had a problem. His new boat had its main halyard hoisted to the top of the mast without the sail. A typical problem. We tried to retrieve it with his flag halyard and a boathook. The technique is to lash the halyard to the boathook near the hook and with enough length for the boathook to reach the errant halyard. Another line is bent to the handle of the boathook to maneuver it once it is up the mast at a level to enable grappling the end of the errant halyard. When we tried to get his halyard, the flag halyard broke and the boathook crashed to the deck.

The following weekend Ed said he had to get that halyard down and needed someone to hoist him up with a winch. This is brutal work and unecessary, I offered him the electric bosun's chair. You could go up the mast with ease. He finally agreed after we tested the only line that could serve as a hoist for the bosun's chain block system.

We had no safety line. I would not have gone up his mast without one, who could tell what condition the bocks at the head of the mast were in. We had tested the line with both our weights at the same time. It would probably hold.

I showed him how to operate the bosun's chair. He really hadn't grasped anything about it and began to flop from side to side. It took a while to get him in tune with the workings of this novel device.

As he went up the mast he stopped and backtracked, started up again, in a series of two steps up and one step back. He depleted the gel cell battery and ended up at his spreaders, only about 15 feet off the deck.

We had a 20 foot piece of stainless tubing and lashed the boathook to it. I handed it up to him and he snagged the end of the halyard and brought it down. He was much more comfortable with the bosun's chair by then.

We both had other work to attend, but he agreed it was a fun device and it would prove usefull for further mast work.

I looked up my own mast and contemplated my next trip with the bosun's chair.

Comments

About & Links

SailBlogs Groups