Kaimusailing

Every once in a while I will look back at this blog of a year ago to see what I was doing then. I was wondering what the weather was like. It turns out it was milder, no surprise. I was working on the exterior of the boat and building the outrigger canoe.
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Here is another you tube video from the Ted Talks series, about offshore racing, a lady who signed up with no previous sailing experience:
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lmbqb7lMqrA
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Although it is very cold in the wee hours of the morning, by afternoon it is comfortable enough to get on with outdoor tasks. I had already marked the waterlines, now I would get back to work grinding the bottoms of the keels. The Wharram hull shape is a long deep vee, so the keel goes all the way from bow to stern, full length. I had tried to grind down there and quit after a minute or so, it was very uncomfortable to reach under the keel and try to grind. I had to come up with better ergonomics.
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The boatyard is very stony, so it is not feasible to lie on one’s back, plus there are all kinds of unpleasant things on the ground. I had a couple of twin sized air mattresses that were deflated and very dirty, but I decided to see if I could use them to elevate myself off the soil and at the same time provide a comfortable surface to work from. I hosed them off after inflating them with the shop vac, then scrubbed them with dish detergent, rinsed them, and left them to dry. Later I put a tarp down under the starboard keel near the stern, put one of the air mattresses on the tarp, then covered the mattress with another tarp. These mattresses are from Walmart and very fragile, so I wanted to protect it from sharp stones on the ground or any debris from the grinding above.
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The mattress worked great and I was able to complete the grinding job on the starboard keel. This meant I had removed any bottom paint, but there was a lot more grinding to follow to remove damaged fiberglass and prepare for reglassing any spots that had damage. There were spots with bare wood, gouges, cracks in the glass, and loose glass in places. That job will wait for warmer weather when all the damage repairs are done with glass and epoxy.
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The next day was windy and temperatures began a steady drop forecast to hit bottom at 26 degrees the following morning. I decided to stay out of the cold and finish reading a book by James Bradley, The Imperial Cruise. It is not about an imperial cruise, but is mainly about how USA policy toward Asia during Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency created a militaristic Japan that overran Korea and later Manchuria and China, eventually leading to WWII in the Pacific. The situation in Korea is much more complicated than communism vs. capitalism. The USA basically threw Korea under the bus after assuring their emperor we would stand by him, encouraging Japan to invade and take over that country. The Boxer rebellion in China was an uprising against Western agents selling illegal opium to the Chinese, opium that Britain cultivated in Burma, and provided up to 20 per cent of Queen Victoria’s Britain’s income. The book is a fascinating read, full of history that is not taught in our schools.
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The next day I ventured out with the inflatable mattresses, this time under the port hull, starting from the bow, and ground off the bottom paint and any loose fiberglass, working all the way to the skeg at the stern. The condition of both keels is very bad, worse than I had suspected, but until they are examined from underneath, the damage is not readily visible from standing alongside the boat. The procedure to repair the keels will require removal of more glass, fairing the damaged areas so that new glass can be laminated on, then filling and fairing any leftover irregularities.
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Captain Webb Chiles has got underway, leaving Boot Key Harbor in Marathon, Florida, and will be tacking East, following the Gulf Stream around the corner at Miami, heading North to Hilton Head Island near the mouth of the Savannah River. He writes in his online journal that he doesn’t have the weather forecast he wants, but looking at passageweather.com shows that he should fly up the coast quickly. If he can average 6 knots, which he ought to be able to do, he will arrive just as cold North winds descend upon South Carolina. He has the Gulf Stream aiding him all the way. The image is a painting called The Monastery, by Bharat Thakur, and is available for purchase at saatchiart.com. Thakur is a spiritual yoga guru and there is a short you tube clip about him here:
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Vd-p8V-HOM