Kaimusailing

I’ve neglected to update on one of the most thrilling sail races, the Superfoiler series, downunder. When we are coping with ice and polar outbursts, the Aussies are into their midsummer, so their racings and sailing activities are in full swing.
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I guess the best way to see this racing, unless you are going to Australia, is to go on YouTube and search for superfoiler. The commentary is typical Aussie stuff and the crews who are miked up are bleeped from time to time.
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This superfoiler boat is a design that was initially thought to be too difficult to sail, but the sailors proved that it can be done, and the result is very high speed sailing and intense competition. Last season team Euroflex was dominant and the other teams were slowly catching on. The race I just watched in Sydney Harbour had Euroflex in 3rd or 4th. But, as always, it’s better to be lucky than good.
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The decisions had to be made with the accumulation of stuff in the boat shed, what to take, everything else will go into the dumpster when they demolish the old boat shed. When I go to ACE hardware and buy a stainless steel nylock nut and pay $.39, it’s hard to throw out a jar of maybe 300 nuts, but then Kaimu becomes a hardware warehouse. Weight.
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I am a DIY fanatic and I have a lot of tools and hardware for just about anything you might want to do yourself. I have thought about this and how sometimes they dig up an ancient burial and the fellow that was buried had some bone tools, but sometimes there are a lot of things buried. If they buried me with my tools it would take quite a big excavation, but it would not include the tools that take up no room, the tools that have come in the digital age.
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I donated a TV camera in a Pelican case that took up too much room and hadn’t been used in a long time. It was a camcorder using DV tapes, yes, it is obsolete. If I was buried with it, the archaeologists would not be able to find out what was recorded on the tapes. However, the company I last worked for, CEI, had a contract with the Library of Congress to restore and maintain obsolete electronic communications equipment. So, just about every gadget that was introduced in the market and later disappeared forever was purchased from sources such as eBay with our taxpayers money and then faithfully restored to service by our company, then these obsolete products would go into the archives, working just like new. It might seem foolish to try to preserve any of this old stuff, but every now and then someone needs to try to get footage off an old tape that may have a lot of historical or legal consequence, and the only way to recreate the footage is to have a recreated obsolete system to play it. What we do now will affect those far in the future. CEI is out of business and I suspect the work of preserving our communications culture has probably ceased.
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I am also a minimalist, but no one would apprehend this if they looked at the contents of Kaimu. It is a big catamaran but its bigness is packed with tons of hardware and tools, plus there is no organization of any of it, we will do that later. The captain who can’t be buried with his tools because he has way too many tools, also can’t find many of these tools due to the mass of tools and hardware. But don’t throw anything away. No.
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We are going through a couple days of cold weather on the overnight and only warming up to the mid 30‘s by mid afternoon. Ice forms on the inlet, which is scary, but mostly clears out later in the day. I ran the engine as a test but also to try to blow the ice that was forming around the boat out into the middle of the inlet. I will have one more day to finish things up and then it will be time to take off in somewhat warmer weather, the forecast is for a light Southerly flow that gets us up into the 40 degree range. This will allow Kaimu to motor down to Norfolk. The extended forecast which really can’t be trusted so far out has a NE gale hitting the coast with 35 knot winds. It would make sense to take the ICW.
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Capn Chris’s son sold me a wind generator that Chris and I had agreed on before his death. It needs new blades and I’m not sure what brand it is. Air X? It comes with the mast and supports. It’s probably good for about 40-50 watts in ordinary wind. When it gets cloudy and the solar panels are out of commission, it is usually windy and a wind generator can put watts into the batteries, and they also do it at night. There is danger from the blades of one of these things coming loose and I was told of one case where someone bled out in the cockpit, alone, after getting hit with a wind generator blade.
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Now it’s the end of the last day here at the dock. All the stuff is stuffed into the boat, mostly in the port hull which now looks like the back warehouse of a hardware store. I’ve run the engine the past couple of days to verify it is viable and also to put it in gear and let the prop wash push the ice away from Kaimu. I could leave right now, but I may leave midday tomorrow. Take it easy getting underway, make sure the boat is working properly, the cruise down Chesapeake Bay is now a snap, 24-36 hours, do it in one shot, then take a break and assess how we are doing. I dug out the survival suit my younger brother gave me when he moved to Hawaii and no longer needed it. I have used it several times and it really works, it stops any wind from getting to you, it’s only problem is if you have to relieve yourself it’s almost as bad as having a full wetsuit on.
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The weather reports and wind predictions are pointing to an event that will happen at about the time we are ready to leave Norfolk. This is a Norther, either NE or NW, gale, and I may take a chance at it. 35 knots from the North, lumpy seas, maybe some big breakers, the sea gets wild, but 12 knots and some surfing on the big waves is hard to resist. The problem is that it could be more, higher winds, and that could be disastrous. I wouldn’t sign up to sail in 50 knots of wind on the coastal route. It’s hard on the nerves, on the gear, on the boat, and it could persist for quite a while. The leg from Norfolk out into the Atlantic doesn’t give you much in the way of harbors of relief, most of the inlets are marked “local knowledge” and they routinely have breaking surf when a big storm hits. Also, these are Northerly winds that are cold, wind chill, hypothermia, what if something goes wrong.
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It was now the morning of departure, untie the mooring lines, back Kaimu into the inlet and head out to sea. The engine stopped suddenly and wouldn’t respond to the starter key. I opened the engine cover and climbed down into the engine bay and quickly found the problem. The main fuse for the engine once again had its wire break. This is due to 17 years of corrosion. I spliced the wires together but now the engine would turn over but didn’t start. Kaimu drifted to another dock and I tied up. I set the main and hoped I could sail out. The wind was fluky but coming from the South. I should be able to sail out on that.
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When I untied from the dock I also rigged another line that I could pull Kaimu forward into the inlet. Unfortunately that didn’t work and I ended up hitting a tree with the mast and dead branches rained down on deck. I used one of the windsurfer masts to pole the catamaran back to the dock where I started over and finally got sailing with just the main and slowly made my way West. It took about 2 hours to go 1/2 mile. The wind was dying and coming more from the Southwest. I ended up anchoring. The wind died completely. The forecast is for even less wind right through the weekend, plus rain is predicted for two of those days.
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The image is of the Bodkin flat as a glass mirror, 0 wind.