Kaimusailing

It’s the Super Bowl weekend and Kaimu has been in port at St. Marys Boat Services on the North River for a couple of days now. A lot of the old crew are back in the boatyard and it feels like old home week. It looks like several of the crew are getting ready to go to the Bahamas or other destinations further South.
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I got underway from Raccoon Spit with the hopes of making it to the boatyard in one day, hoping to catch the tide currents just right. Indeed it happened that way. I bucked an ebb tide all the way up the Cumberland River and plugged along while several power yachts zoomed past, hitting us with their wakes. I expected to get a boost at some point, after all the ebb must also go into Cumberland Sound which is where we were headed. It didn’t happen that way.
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When Kaimu was nearly to the last leg going into the Naval Base and into the Sound, a Towboat/US boat zoomed by with its lights flashing. Earlier I had overheard radio chatter about a power yacht that had run aground, I assumed up ahead of me.
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The talk on the radio was, “Blue boat don’t follow me, I’m hard aground. I am right in the center of the channel but the day marks are all screwed up..” “are you saying I should favor the green markers?""I was following the purple line. The sun was a problem.” “Blue boat it looks like you have found the channel", then from the Coast Guard, “All stations please use channel 16 for distress and hailing only, please take your chatter to another channel”. Then I heard them say channel 71, channel seven one. There was no further chatter on that channel.
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As I came up the waterway channel I could see the blinking lights up ahead, but the grounded yacht was way off to the right of the channel, maybe 150 feet off. He was solidly aground and the ebb tide left him with about a foot of waterline showing. I was interested in what the chart said so I paid attention to my track around this narrow turn in the ICW. Kaimu tracked right on the red line, on our chart the center of the ICW, and we were never on the wrong side of the markers.
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Later, here in the boatyard, Radio Bill and I looked on all our charts for some indication that the marked channel on the chart went astray, but no it did not on any of the charts.
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Kaimu needs a mast and Doc the boat chopper has a mast from an O’day 37, plus the boom and mainsail, plus many of the other pieces to create a new rig for the catamaran. The price is reasonable, so my search for a mast is over, now it is just the project of adapting the mast to a catamaran. I plan to have a cutter rig again and will have to add an inner forestay to the mast. Epoxy is on order and already on its way. I will have to replace the #4 crossbeam, the one that has the mast traveler track on it. It will take 15 planks to laminate a new beam. My old scarf joint adapter for the woodshop’s table saw is still there, so I will be creating a lot of sawdust.
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We took a trip over to Luigi’s for some pasta. He hasn’t seen me in about 6 months and Radio Bill had been in Europe for about 2 years. The food was much better than my ramen noodles at sea.
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The weather had taken a turn to the freezing zone and has now warmed up with forecast for the next week and a half up to 70 in the afternoon. It’s a good chance to get something accomplished, but so far I have been recuperating from the trip. I expect to really start doing something after Super Bowl Sunday.
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The photo is another of the sunset over nearby Kings Bay Naval Base.