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 [...]

Boatyard of the Superb Moon

23 February 2019 | St Marys, GA
Capn Andy | Mild, foggy
I was beginning to glue another scarf joint for the crossbeam when Doc, the cut up, was telling me about his hard dodger project and how he was going to do the edges of the dodger where the mostly flat surface curves downward. He was going to add two long stringers to that edge but his wood was about 8 feet long and too short. I saw where he had used butt joints to lengthen the other stringers in his dodger and I suggested he use my scarf joint jig and use scarf joints. We ended up in the woodshop and cutting the scarf joints with the jig is very easy with small stringers, we were done literally in a minute.
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Back at the breezeway where we were both working on our projects he ended up entrusting me with gluing the scarf joints, so I ended up dry clamping my stuff and his stuff, then doing it again with epoxy.
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Then it was time to return to the mast and mount a pair of rope clutches above the winches that were already installed. The new tap and die set from Harbor Freight did not work well and all the tapped holes were chewed up and probably not going to hold those rope clutches when I really needed them. A local fellow named Geoff came by and we talked about how the 1/4-20 tap wasn't working very well. He left on his bicycle and returned with his own tap which made a beautiful threaded hole. I decided to fasten the clutches with machine screws with JB Weld, an epoxy product.
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Later I was working with the two upper shrouds that were wrapped around the mast. The rest of the standing rigging had been removed by Doc. He couldn't get one of the upper shrouds off the mast because it had a small cleat clamped onto the rigging wire and that cleat wouldn't fit through the slot in the mast that the rigging wire went into. I went to Doc and asked him about what he had done with the rigging wires. They seemed to me to be in the wrong sockets. This type of wire termination was used by Isomat, the mast's manufacturer, and the rigging wires terminate at the mast in sockets formed in the cast aluminum parts of the mast, like the masthead and the spreader fitting. Each socket is precisely angled to provide support for the end of the wire which has a termination that is like a mushroom but upside down mushroom. In other words the termination has a flat top, is round, and has a curved lower surface that matches exactly with the socket on the mast fitting. John, the ditch digging rigger, came over and schooled me on how the rig works. If the stay is not exactly angled from the mast, the round fittings won't fit perfectly and you have what is called a point loading, all the strain on that wire is concentrated on one spot of the round fittings. Then the fittings crack and in a salt environment the aluminum corrodes, the mast fitting fails. Very expensive. The fittings are welded onto the mast.
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Now I understood that maybe I can't use the old stays. Each stay would have to terminate on deck in an exact location, I couldn't use my old chainplates or the bow bridle. Also the upper shrouds go down to the ends of the spreaders, but below the spreaders the shrouds are expected to terminate on chainplates more or less abeam of the mast step, and Kaimu's chainplates are aft of the mast step. Back to the drawing board.
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The next day I glued pieces of one layer of the 2X6's to an already glued up layer producing a double layer. I used the cedar 2X4 laminated beam as a work surface and used 12 oz. of epoxy to glue 18 feet of 2X5 together including one scarf joint in the middle. My clamps can't span the 7 inch thickness of work surface plus laminations so I borrowed some huge C clamps from the boatyard. These rarely get used and maybe I was the one who last used them about 3 years ago when I glued beams together. I had to clean the clamps and lubricate them to get them working properly.
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After the disappointing reviews of the Chinese solar charge controller I almost bought, I found one that was more expensive but with several positive reviews. It handles 30 amps of power and costs about $100, the Epever 3210AN. I ordered two and coming from China will take a while.
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I've come to the conclusion that I will set up the new mast using the existing ball and socket upper stays as diamond stays from the sockets at the top of the mast down over the spreaders and terminated somewhere lower, we have to avoid the winches, gooseneck, and rope clutches down there, and all the rest of the stays will be attached to tangs hung on bolts with compression tubes (stainless pipe) within the mast and small stainless plates that keep the compression tube within the mast and also provide a way to spread the load of the attachment point so that the thin aluminum won't tear or distort. The stay arrangement can then be like my original cutter rig with two forestays, upper and lower shrouds, and running backstays. I'll be fabricating the stainless parts in the boatyard's metal shop. The rigger here has described his process of fabricating these parts.
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The next day was a repeat of the gluing a layer of planks on the crossbeam, but this was the last layer. The next two gluings will be gluing two layers of the pine planks to the bottom and two layers to the top, the two layers are already glued together, so two big glue jobs left basically gluing 2 2X5's top and bottom of the cedar 4X4.
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The photo was taken of the full supermoon in the direction of the boatyard while at anchor.
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