Kaimusailing

I noticed I was more active and anticipating the work day with more of a positive attitude. “Attitude is Everything, Dammit”. I’m not sure why I feel this way, maybe it is getting past the big bottom repair/repainting stage, or maybe it is the ETL, estimated time to launch. June 28.
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I wrote it down on the calendar, each day I can look at a decreasing number, and a number not too scary now, 51 days to launch. But later I suspect it will be 4 days to launch and I will be in a bind.
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The “warm spring” that sailblogs requests I enter in the weather column, is now more like hot summer. And hot summer is next month, in June. So, any work accomplished now is a piece of cake compared to work performed in 95 to 105 degrees and high humidity, in summer.
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I’ve factored nearly everything into my estimated launch date, such as not being able to do much when it gets so hot. The job list has not yet been organized, I have been just doing whichever job seemed most important. Now the jobs will become more numerous and require more planning, especially if they carry into June. Such as the old staysail which will become the new self tending jib. It suffered greatly when the staysail stay parted and it was dragged aboard in 35 knot winds. It has been stowed in its bag ever since. I will have to run it up again soon to see if it is OK, otherwise it has to go to the sailmaker for repair. And come back before we relaunch. There are a lot of things like that, things that have a sequence and timing that cannot be overlooked with 50 days left to launch. But I haven’t made the appropriate list or sorted things out yet. So, probably, one of the most important jobs to do is to find out what are the most important jobs to do.
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Doc the boat chopper purchased Trillium, the C&C 24 sloop, from me and I made a couple trips out to the boat to remove my stuff. I have mixed feelings about selling off a boat that I love to sail so much, but it isn’t practical to have two boats, you can only sail one at a time. The outrigger canoe is different, that can be taken on board the catamaran and brought along on the voyage.
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I had tried to make the collinear antenna, but my soldering irons are old and useless. I bought a new one for ten bucks at walmart and assembled the antenna complete with a BNC connector on the end of the feed wire. I had never made a collinear antenna before, it is a lot more work than the simple 1/4 wave coaxial dipoles I have made in the past. The tested performance of the collinear antenna makes it more desirable, higher gain.
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I ran the old staysail up the inner forestay and it looks usable, some fraying at the foot of the sail. One jib hank has lost its piston. Otherwise it looks good to go.
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I tested the collinear antenna with the dAISy AIS receiver and the Getac B300X laptop down at the woodshop which is close to the water. I wanted to catch the Cumberland Island ferry which is actually visible from our docks as it leaves the waterfront at St. Marys and trundles down the St. Marys River East to Cumberland Island. I never got a peep out of the ferry, but the dAISy and the antenna picked up the St. Marys Entrance sea buoy, 15 miles away, and Red 16, which is another buoy equipped with an AIS transmitter. I experimented, not believing I was picking up the sea buoy, after all it is not line of sight, but in a line with the boatyard and local environs, then across Point Peter and the end of Cumberland Island. I disconnected the antenna and the AIS icon disappeared from the sea buoy, reconnected and it returned after a few moments.
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It was obvious the ferry wasn’t sending out an AIS signal, which they are mandated to do as a commercial vessel. Did someone forget to turn it on? It would be a shame to get run over by a ferry we didn’t believe was there.
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We have had very fine weather and progress has been good, but the forecast is changing to the summer pattern of SE winds, humidity, and thunderstorms. I tried extended forecasts from Passageweather.com and windy.com and it looks like it will continue as far out as they project, around 10 days. It seems early for this type of weather and work will be uncomfortable when it is even possible.
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I have a few small but time consuming jobs up on deck, extending the mast wiring to the pilothouse, adding latches to the two forward hatches over the bow storage spaces, relocating hatch hinges on the replacement hatch (an old hatch from one of the forward bunks) to match the existing hinges on the starboard rear storage compartment, which will later get a manual head that pumps directly overboard.
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The new deck plate that has been sitting in place but not bolted down was bolted down, but it wasn’t easy. My procedure was to mark the bolt holes directly with a Sharpie pen right through the eyelets for the bolts in the deck structure. Then I drilled these holes for 1/4-20 bolts, then took calipers and measured the little 4 sided boss on the underside of the carriage bolt heads and found .3“ would be large enough to allow the bolt heads to lie flat on the deck plate and allow epoxy to saturate the wood around the bolt, then fill the remaining gap with thickened epoxy, allow to set, and then bolt the thing down on deck. I used masking tape to mask off the bolt threads so they didn’t get filled with epoxy and also made the masking serve as a sort of bolt hanger to keep the bolts from dropping out of the holes. The epoxy was applied with the deck plate upside down and the bolts drawn up as much as possible to seal off the oversized bolt holes. It all worked out very well and I checked from time to time to see if the epoxy was getting lost, it wasn’t, and the next day I removed all the tape and brought the deck plate back up on deck and tried to fit it.
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The bolts didn’t line up with the eyelets, which was hard to believe, but I kept working at it and got them jammed into the eyelets by levering or pulling them with a length of stainless wire. They all ended up where they needed to be and nylok nuts were used to cinch the deck plate down tight.
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The image is from windy.com and it is their forecast for next Wednesday. Notice the SE flow coming up the Florida coast and also what looks like an intense low pressure system off the coast of Alabama. The hurricane season starts next month and I hope it doesn’t start early.