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 [...]

The Name Game

06 April 2017 | St. Marys, GA
Capn Andy/Warm Spring
When I put the name Kaimu on the catamaran down in Marathon, FL, about 15 years ago, I came up with rainbow lettering and Madura Bold font. The Wharram logo was painted on the bow and the hailing port was stuck on the stern under the rainbow letters. The hailing port was made of precut stick on mylar letters. It has held up well over the years. The edges are curling up a bit. Considering what the boat has been through, they are very durable. The hand painted boat name and logo didn’t fare as well. I think I used ordinary enamel the first time and it looked great for a while.
.
After a few years the letters faded and a friend offered to repaint them. She chose fluorescent paint and at the time the boat was tied up in Baltimore harbor. We were co-hosting a Wharram get-together and I was trying to spruce up the boat.
.
I recommended painting the letters while leaning over the side because that’s how I did it. It might be strange to paint while leaning over upside down, so the artist decided to paint it from the dock. Well, she must know the best way. Later while cleaning out the aft compartment I heard a sploosh!, oh, that must be the paint can going in the water.
.
I came up out of the hatch and looked over the side and saw blonde hair swirling in the dank Baltimore harbor water. I used to be a lifeguard when I was young and remembered how important it was to act quickly, the first few seconds are crucial. But I hesitated, looking at floating styrofoam cups and other debris in the smelly water. Fortunately the artist came up to the surface and sputtering, climbed back up onto the dock. “I guess I should have used your method”, she said.
.
Unfortunately, the fluorescent paint didn’t last, so it was only a year later that the name had to be repainted. All this time the mylar stick-on hailing port looked just fine.
.
Now it is time to repaint the topsides of the boat and thus do the name again, and all the other stuff. I thought about how much work it is to make new patterns of the font, mark the boat, and laboriously paint the name, logo, and hailing port back on. Well, I would get the hailing port in mylar again, that would make that part easy, but what about the other hand painted graphics? I decided to look for someone who could do the boat name just like before, but in mylar, and do the Wharram logo, which would have to be a custom graphic.
.
doityourselflettering.com is what I found on the internet and sent them an email asking if they could do rainbow lettering. After further correspondence they said they could not only do the rainbow lettering, but the logo, and of course the hailing port. The graphic above is what they sent me as an example of how it might look.
.
There is some question of whether I am going to change the color of any of it, but there is no doubt I will not be painting it on the boat, just stick it on and it will last another 15 years.
Comments

About & Links

SailBlogs Groups