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 [...]

Savannah to Doboy Sound

29 January 2019 | Doboy Sound, GA
Capn Andy/Cold and Windy
The anchorage South of Savannah was Elba Island Cut. In the middle of the night on one of my anchor checks I found we had dragged. There are strong currents here and also ship traffic that sends a large wake to bounce the catamaran around. I reanchored and it held this time.
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In the morning when I got underway I was shocked to see my smart phone hadn’t charged overnight, it was down to 31 per cent power. I relied on it for back up navigation and left it on in the pilothouse where I could monitor our course. I also was having problems with the CF-C1 laptop that I use for navigation, for some reason its GPS dongle wouldn’t always start, in fact, it rarely started. I could look at charts but no GPS position.
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I moved the dongle to another USB port and it started up the second time I rebooted the laptop. I left it running all day. I plugged an extension cord into the inverter outlet and plugged the laptop’s charger into it. Fortunately it was a clear sunny day with lots of solar power.
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I hadn’t gone very far when a very nice ketch with traditional bowsprit passed us and then just a few minutes later came back going in the opposite direction. They didn’t call me on the radio. I verified I was on the correct waterway and then came to a swing bridge that I could easily fit under, mastless, but they must have had some problem. Later there was a Coast Guard all stations radio bulletin the the bridge was stuck in the down position.
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I continued navigating and found another phone charging cable and tried it and it worked. Soon the phone was all charged up.
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I stopped for fuel along the way and tied up with just one line on the port bow. We were once again heading into an adverse current and that current held us at the dock. We later got a boost for a while, but in the afternoon the ebb tide current bucked us as we headed up to a location known as Florida Passage. We are getting closer to St. Marys, we are in Georgia, and up ahead are some familiar islands, Jekyll and St. Simons. We ended up anchoring off the channel part way through Florida Passage and I changed the oil in the outboard which was interesting working from the dinghy.
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In the morning we got underway and headed down the Bear River. This feeds into St. Catherines Sound North of St. Catherines Island. This begins a string of barrier islands known as the Golden Isles. Once again we were bucking the flood tide all the way to the Sound.
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Across the Sound we headed up the Newport River and had a boost from the tide for a little bit. We branched off into Johnson Creek and were slowed to the 2 knot range by the current. I was hoping for some help at some point from the tides, but as it worked out, we fought the flood tide all the way to Sapelo Sound and once we crossed the Sound, high tide had occurred and then going into the Front River, you guessed it, the ebb tide hit us.
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The forecast was for a cold front to come through, bring rain, and very cold temperatures in the morning. The wind was on the nose of course. Midafternoon I did some planning about where we would be around 5:30 PM, just about a half hour before sundown. Knowing that the ebb was going to delay us even more when I got up to full strength, I guessed that we would make about 5 more miles. I looked ahead on the chart and put a marker at a good looking anchorage. I was looking for about 10 feet of water well off the channel.
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With about and hour or so left in the cruising day we got a boost from the current. This happens because the ICW links waterways together in many places. Thus, you can get ebb tide in one waterway and then an opposite ebb tide in the next waterway. We had gone from the Front River to the Crescent River and were going twice as fast as I had figured. I cleared the marker from the chart and chose another spot further down. We got there just before sundown and I idled the engine down and turned toward shore. When the depth got to 12 feet I dropped anchor and set it with the engine.
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The photo is a look back at Sapelo Sound as we entered the Front River.
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