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 [...]

Georgetown, MD to Willoughby Bay in One Part

05 November 2016 | Willoughby Bay, Norfolk, Virginia
Capn Andy/Fall Weather
The internet was broken in the boatyard and the crew was very busy moving boats around and too busy to reset the AP. So, the blog entry sits, but it’s time to write another.
.
The yacht delivery was scheduled for the 3rd of November and looking ahead, the forecast for the upper Chesapeake was West going North for a couple days. That would be great for a yacht heading South. The boat is a Gemini catamaran reputed to have a good turn of speed off the wind. I began to get my things together for the trip up to the Chesapeake.
.
The SPOT device that tracks your location and uploads it to the internet was still working after all the abuse it had received. I will take it on this trip and plan to upload locations every 2 hours or so. You can see the results at: http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=0UkeurjmS2tNJSuj4kqJAbIGDNAxGM4RY
.
When you go to that link, the background can be zoomed or changed to satellite view or map view.
.
I managed to finish molding the solar panel brackets, the last batch were in the molds, ready to be trimmed when I returned from the yacht delivery. I was able to speed up the process by wetting the fiberglass in a shallow tray and piling 4 layers on top of one another, then lifting the whole mess and pressing it into the mold. This produced brackets that were 8 layers of roving thick and they seemed very strong. The excess epoxy and glass was trimmed off using a cut off disk in the angle grinder. It resulted in fiberglass dust all over me and itching.
.
We arrived at Philadelphia and used Uber to get a ride down to Georgetown. It was a long ride, there is no major airport near Georgetown. We arrived at the boat mid afternoon and began to assess its condition. The decks were covered with green mold, so a scrubbing session was in order. The skipper checked the engine, transmission, and sail drive for lubrication and we ran the engine. The owner arrived with groceries and apologized for being late. He had pneumonia and wasn’t operating at full capacity. We discussed our plans and finally decided to stay in port overnight and leave in the morning. We had more work to do, climbed the mast to rehang one of the lazy jacks, stowed gear, ate some canned food, and knocked off for the day.
.
Part of the decision to stay in port was a strong cold front that was forecast to bring winds up to 30 knots, but after is blew through we would have favorable winds, daylight, and be rested. We got underway in the wee hours of the morning while it was still dark. The entrance to Georgetown is about 10 miles from the bay and has many twists and turns getting there. At first it was calm inside at the dock, then later the wind began to get stronger as we made it out to the bay. This is the upper part of Chesapeake Bay, narrow, more like a river, an estuary, and we set sail, first with the RF genoa, and sailed downwind.
.
The wind forecast was for 20 knots and greater, small craft warning, 18-33, but we decided to add the mainsail, it didn’t seem to be blowing that much. The greater problem was the lack of room to line up tacks going downwind on the upper bay. The genoa does not draw well when going directly down wind, the best angle is with apparent wind at 120 off the bow. The skipper said this boat does well wing and wing, so we set that up. He was right, we were sailing along at about 6 1/2 knots, but little Trillium could do that in this wind.
.
As we got below Pooles Island I felt I was sailing into my home waters. We seldom sailed this far north when we were out for a daysail, maybe once or twice. The bay opens up as you go south although it is shallow in spots. Down near the Bodkin it is wide and includes the approaches to Baltimore and the Patapsco. Then it narrows again where Kent Island almost abuts Annapolis. We caught the tail end of the outgoing tide there and slid through, heading to Thomas Point Light on the western shore just south of Annapolis. There was a concentration of traffic in the channel under the bridge. We kept to one side as Coast Guard and ocean vessels passed by.
.
The wind remained strong and from the north and a chill set in. We decided to have 4 hour watches starting with a 5 hour watch at six bells. I took it and was confident I could do a 5 hour watch instead of the 36 hour affairs on Kaimu and Trillium. After about 1 hour I was shivering and wishing I had brought my exposure suit, although it wasn’t practical to take it as carry-on luggage through the airport. Also, the autoinflating PFD was not allowed on American Airlines, our carrier, but skipper brought one through, not knowing about the regulation.
.
Watch standing consisted of setting the autopilot to maintain the best course to avoid ship traffic yet get down the bay in as direct manner as possible. Maintaining the 120 degree apparent wind would help keep our speed up. We did the math on how long it would take to get to Willoughby bay at current speed and would it coincide with the flood tide there, which is very strong. The ebb tide is difficult to sail against to get into port.
.
The owner of the boat bragged about his huge batteries and efficient solar panels, and on paper they looked like they could do the job. He had many conveniences operating off them, including the autopilot, a refrigerator, and inverter. His solar panels were installed at an angle to allow sitting headroom under their leading edge, so they sloped backward. On a southbound course the angle to the sun was negligible and so our batteries lost their charge. The answer was to start the engine and charge them back up. Of course this coincided with the watch change and I dragged my tired body into the starboard aft cabin to nap for 4 hours. It was said to be the best cabin on the boat. Maybe they were kidding.
.
The sound of the engine transmitting through the fiberglass hull to the nearby starboard aft cabin is difficult to describe. That is not the only sound resonating in the cabin. The design of the Gemini catamaran uses a low clearance bridgedeck with a sort of nacelle in the center, almost like the center hull of a trimaran, but just clearing the water. Of course it pounds into the waves and that sound is very unnerving. Kapow, kapow, along with the choo choo trainlike sounds of the 3 cylinder diesel engine which vibrates so badly the oil filter keeps loosening and the coolant cap came loose. Oil and coolant draining from the engine make for a mess in the engine bay. Meanwhile I actually start to drift off to sleep when this up. I gave up on trying to get some sleep and went up on deck.
.
The skipper was very busy, the engine had lost its coolant and overheated. We were occupied with getting things back to seminormal when he said, “What is that behind...” and jumped on the wheel and turned us to port. What it was was Point-no-Point light, which looks impressive up close. We had plenty of room to clear it and resumed course.
.
The problem with the layout of the boat was that the solar array blocked much of the view aft and the helm station had lots of electronics in your way to view forward. With the sails up the view is restricted on that side of the boat, so visual navigation is limited. It is a big mistake to sit there staring at the Garmin GPS, because your night vision suffers, and what is depicted on the GPS screen may not jibe with reality.
.
When the wind dropped we got the diesel going again, keeping an eye on its fluid levels. Now it seemed to be running smoother, not like a runaway locomotive crashing down a flight of stairs, and I got my sleep. Before turning in I made breakfast of onion and cheese omelets and coffee in a percolator. The galley was not equipped well. We had oatmeal and no pot to cook it. A small fry pan and a large one that was too big. Lots of canned quickie meals that are small portions laden with sodium. I was proud of my omelets. People at sea will eat almost anything.
.
After my nap the skipper had the boat going like blazes with the genoa rolled up, just the main and the engine. He said the wind had got up to 25 knots. We were making great time. Soon we were approaching Norfolk where there was a lot of marine traffic, navy ships, cruise liners, and the fleet of Caribbean 1500 sailing rallyists. We threaded our way through, especially wary of the warships, and scooted into Willoughby Bay, doused the mainsail, and motored into Rebel Marine.
.
The image is of the SPOT tracking down the bay.
Comments

About & Links

SailBlogs Groups