Kaimusailing

Things are changing in the boatyard at a time of year when nothing happens here. I am looking at the launch window for Kaimu and having to step forward and find out if there is any other obstacle, let’s launch this baby.
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Instead of lading on the boat all the water and fuel and heavy tool boxes, I am going to keep them on the hard and keep the boat as light as possible. It will help the chief crane operator, boatyard owner, and chief logistics officer, Rocky, to know that my catamaran that clocked in at 19 thousand pounds will be closer to the weight when he reblocked the catamaran, about 8 1/2 tons. About a ton less. I can’t imagine the tools, water, and fuel would come to a ton, but I will let him have a lighter boat to launch if he lets me tie up and then load up the boat while it is at the dock.
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I moved the two work tables, covered with tools, etc., to the port side of the port hull, thus out of the way to move the boat. It didn’t take long and I almost gave away one of the tables, but Doc of Doc’s Chop Shop, who would have been the recipient said that he didn’t need it, but he would sell it to someone.
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Doc is now my friend, but I kind of know him. He is personally wealthy and has no real handle on prices for used boat parts. His method is to take the retail price for a boat part, then sell it at about half that. Most of the yardbirds have become disgruntled at this pricing, He is selling, sometimes, parts that have been in use for a decade, underwater, and I don’t think he can ask for some of his prices. But I have had great transactions with him, and I have given him stuff that I could not get rid of, even by donation, but have a lot of value, so let him sell it.
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He bought me a carbonated soft drink at the vending machine run by his fellow yardbird, but not his friend, and I wondered how he could pay a dollar that way. It was very enjoyable to sip the ice cold citrus soda. I didn't often go to the soda machine and spend money there.
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It’s not like I am scurrying away from a bad situation, I am scurrying away from a good boatyard, which I will come back to, but I am scurrying away to the sea with Kaimu, I am the custodian of the boat and I have to let her loose on the sea, and I won’t mind going along again. I reviewed my route plan from the sea buoy at St. Marys Entrance to Cape Hatteras to the mouth of the Chesapeake. On one of the charts the approximate center of the Gulfstream is marked and at this end of the route you’d have to go out about a hundred miles to get to the Gulfstream (you were right Capn Smith), but then off Cape Hatteras it’s only about 40 miles offshore, so I changed the route to get on the Gulfstream conveyor belt and get 30 to 40 miles boost each day. Since the whole route is less than 600 miles and a good rule of thumb is average of 5 knots, that would be 120 hours, or 5 days and with 35 miles boost per day, it would come to more like 4 days, but it will take the first day just to get to the Gulfstream, so 5 days is doable. If I instead go North and sidle over to the Gulfstream, I will save the day of going out of my way to hit the stream, but I won’t get the boost for about 3 days, about half of the trip. Another consideration is we’re taking a boat right out of the boatyard, maybe we should stay closer to shore in case any problems show up.
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So far my experience with the capes of the Carolinas and Virginia has been of unexpected weather, sudden shifts. It’s like it’s own weather pattern there. They definitely have a hard time predicting weather off Cape Hatteras. I remember having breakfast with the windsurfing club at Cape Hatteras at a local diner. The locals are called “Bankers” because it is the Outer Banks where they live. One of the locals said, “I’ve been stuck in sand before and I’ve been stuck in snow before, but I never got stuck in snow and sand at the same time.” He had gotten stuck while fishing in the surf.
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When Kevin, the boatyard master of all mechanical, came around to Kaimu, I thought he was coming to take the outrigger canoe down to the water. It turned out he was only checking the garbage cans to load them on his fork lift to take them to dump into one of the dumpsters. However he agreed to lift the outrigger canoe and bring it down to the water, the garbage cans were far from full, so he left them. We ran through the yard with an 18 foot wide load, the canoe was beam on to the fork lift. Down at the water it was low tide, no launchie launchie. Plus, the area was full of boat stuff, a logistics nightmare, for skipper Rob, who was trying to transition from landlubber to liveaboard ocean cruiser. He had too much stuff.
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Right now the boatyard is hauling out a Navy tugboat tomorrow, Wednesday, and that requires the travel lift. The same travel lift is needed to move a large pontoon boat that is in my way for Kaimu to get down to the water. I can see a couple of days delay already, on top of weeks of delay. Glaciers may be melting away, but glacial activity persists.
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Glaciers, cold weather, hard to think about that in this heat, but my daughter who is doing custom knitting and crochet, plus something called diarama, made me a balaclava. When you google balaclava, most of them look like an Islamic terror headgear, but she thankfully made me one with contrasting stripes. I had just been providing her with nautical head gear ideas, she made this on her own and is sending it to me. She has a Etsy store called handmadebysolywoda. She can make you almost anything. The image is of her diarama of one of her Puffington Pals fishing from a knitted boat called “Kaimu”.