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.
11 February 2025 | St. Marys, GA
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
Recent Blog Posts
11 February 2025 | St. Marys, GA

Venus not in Blue Jeans

I went ahead and made the lobster bisque with pasta, a variation on the recipe from Trader Joe’s, the one that is “viral”. I don’t want my food to be viral.

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.

#4 Beam Pt. IV

10 July 2013 | Bodkin Inlet/Chesapeake Bay
Capn Andy/thunderstorms
The old #4 Beam was laid on its side close to its original location, to serve as a work table for the lamination of the new beam. Meanwhile, the new lumber has been organized on the foredeck, stacked with space to allow drying, wrapped partially with clear shrink wrap, and clamped and strapped to prevent warping. The clear wrapping is open on the bottom to allow air to circulate through the stack. It is out in the sunlight, so the stack of lumber is like a big solar collector, drying the lumber further.
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4 planks were selected to start the scarf joint and beam laminating process. Scarfs were measured and cut, at 10:1 bevel, and the result was totally unacceptable. The scarf cuts were lined up with the planks clamped together on edge. A circular saw was used to cut the scarf across the 4 planks. Then they were turned over and cut from the other side to complete the scarfs.
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There were two big errors in this procedure, one was that the saw simply did not cut perpendicular to the planks, second, the bevel turned out to be 5:1 because of a simple mistake when marking the measurements. The mess was put away for a day while I contemplated what to do next.
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I was stung on a toe by a yellowjacket bee while looking for a tool on the boat. I then saw the bees were milling about the rope locker which stores the anchor warp. It has an opening on deck to allow the warp to be deployed right from the locker to the foredeck. I reacted to the sting by throwing a bug bomb into the opening of the locker. The bees all came out, hundreds, and I ran away. I crept back and hosed down the area of the locker opening and succeeded in drowning many bees. Eventually I had to clear off the top of the locker of several ropes and then flip the lid of the locker open. Then a direct deluge of hose water cleared out a lot more bees.
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The rope locker is right in the area of where the lumber is stored and also it is on the path back aft to the beam project. It had to be cleared of the bees.
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I researched the scarf joint procedure outlined in the Gougeon Brothers book about epoxy boatbuilding. This publication is available from their website as a pdf file. It has loads of information about techniques and data about wood boatbuilding. I disregarded most of their scarf joint suggestions, because I had used one of them that didn't work out, but I had an idea and went to Harbor Freight Tools and looked at routers and planers. I wanted to fix the scarfs I had already cut, and make more scarfs for the rest of the beam without the disappointment I had already experienced. There was a power planer available for about $35, so I bought it.
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I began with a short piece of wood with a bad scarf bevel. The correct bevel was marked on it and a few passes of the power planer removed the excess wood. A few more passes with the belt sander, while checking the “flatness” of the bevel, resulted in a perfect bevel. This piece of wood was used as a guide to aid the planer on the remaining scarfs.
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I couldn't beam with pride on a pile of lumber with nice scarf bevels. The original error, the incorrect bevel, threw the overall dimensions of the planks way off. I had to remeasure them and mark them and compare to my original list of plank lengths to see what could be salvaged. It was worse than I feared, not only were the lengths wrong, they were irregular, so a whole new plan had to be devised from the remaining lumber. If I could get to it when the bees calmed down...
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It was July 4th and the trimaran owner came down to the dock and pumped out his boat, which had flooded a bit in the recent thunder downpours. It was amazing how much water can collect on a 40X30 ft deck. He obviously needed to repair the deck so it didn't drain tons of water into the hulls. He was putting kids through school and working 7 days a week. No way out. We talked a bit about his options. Probably the best option was putting a tarp over the deck leaks and hoping the whole thing would survive a few years until he could get the time and money to fix it up.
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I did get a bee bite again, but over by the trimaran. He said he couldn't go down below, due to the bees on his boat. I also saw a wasp entering the boat next to him, down the ventilator scoop on the dorade box. Back on Kaimu, I gingerly tried to peek into the rope locker and its bees nest. They were still there. I needed to work around that area.
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I had pried off the top of the rope locker, but the bees were still embedded in the ropes down in there. Any attempt at trying to pull the bundles of rope out resulted in a swarm of bees, and they were not just flying around, they had a vengeance. Kamikaze bees.
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I had bought a pack of “Oxyclean!”, that miracle cleaner in a spray bottle that will clean anything. I poured a bottle into a bucket of water and poured the whole thing into the bees nest. They reacted violently, but I could tell their numbers were reduced. I prepared another bucket of water, this time with the only remaining cleaner available, “Pro V” shampoo. The bees weren't up on the latest hair care and many more of them were gone. It turned out that yellowjackets build their nests underground, so the rope locker was perfect. Their nests are at the bottom, in the ground they will be in an animal burrow or in a pile of rocks, they will nest under a wooden deck on a house as long as there is some protection from rain. Flooding seems to be an effective way to deal with them.
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I had to have access to the lumber that was stacked in front of the bees nest, so now I could timidly poke around there and see if the bees reacted. One or two did fly around, but I was able to get to work finally.
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It was suggested that I should have been making simple beams like the originals, which are just planks, one on top of the other. This would require a 20 ft length which seems to be unavailable locally. Wharram specifies butt joints, which are simply planks laid end to end with no special joinery. Most carpenters would use scarf joints whenever a plank needs to be lengthened. I made scarf joints and had plenty of problems mostly due to the difficulty of cutting precise joints in lumber that is somewhat irregular.
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It turned out that I could only add one piece of wood at a time to the new crossbeam. Then the epoxy glue had to set for a day. If the glue joint was disturbed, it would set with problems, an odd angle, or an open seam.
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Cutting the scarf joints was hit or miss. I had no saw that could cut a 6 inch wide swath. When I was younger I could use a hand saw, but now that is out of the question. A try at cutting two 3 inch wide cuts from opposite sides was unreliable. It might work, or it might screw things up. Gougeon Brothers recommend using a radial arm saw that can cut the narrow bevels. I priced one such saw and it was on sale for $800.
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The picture is of the new crossbeam slowly being assembled. The visible plank is on top of the “I” part, which is laying directly on the old beam, which is on its side. So, this represents just 3/8ths of the beam. There will be another plank laminated on the bottom, then two planks laminated on the top and two more on the bottom, and finally, small fillets on the inside corners to make an “X” beam out of an “I” beam.
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