Kaimusailing

Another Catalina 30 is available at Boat Angel. This one is in Long Beach, CA. It has the Atomic Four and says it does not run/function. I can see some teak trim missing on either side of the companionway hatch.
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The battery desulfator I purchased never arrived. The vendor finally gave a tracking number and it was delivered. We searched high and low throughout the boatyard but it didn’t turn up. I was able to call FedEx who said it was delivered to an address about 20 miles away near the King’s Bay Submarine Base. Based on the awful communication with the vendor, I suspect it was misaddressed. I requested a refund and after a little more research on these devices ordered a slightly more powerful and expensive unit on eBay. These devices get mixed reviews. A battery can be too far gone.
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Amazingly, I hear another blatant lie from a friend who happens to be a true conservative Trump lover. The lie: there haven’t been as many deaths from covid-19 as from the flu.
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Maybe somewhere back in the beginning of the pandemic this might have been true for a while. As it stands now, the 2019-2020 flu season deaths are projected to be around 22,000 in the USA. Covid deaths have surpassed 250,000 already. Nuff said.
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There are a lot of people packing personal weapons, expecting gun laws by the incoming administration. I shudder at the thought that I could be killed by someone who has dementia, confuses me with someone who they hate, or someone with a too short fuse. This country is in for more killings by handguns, both by police, and by entitled citizens. I am not a liberal, most liberals would call me conservative. I grew up with guns but gave them up after killing a rabbit. Don’t want to kill, also don’t want to be killed. So why do I go out on boats which is the most lethal thing you can do to yourself? So far I haven’t been killed by riding boats or riding motorcycles, both looming as dangerous activities. I am a coward who doesn’t want to die, so much, that when I involve myself in deadly activities, I really try to overcome them. Like a mountain climber, I don’t lose grip. As someone said, sailing is like mountain climbing, only different.
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The water is our life, within us is basically seawater, we respond to the oscillations of the moon and the tides, we respond to water, I want to live near, nay, on the water. Yet it means danger. But it invites us. Like lemmings we go forward. It’s not good enough to be on the beach watching a sunset. We need to be on the water, feeling the tides and currents. Going out for a short jaunt gives us a jolt of the sea, but going out overnight gives us peace with the water. Going out for a vacation can replenish our sense of where we came from, but we need something more than a canoe or a kayak.
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I recommend the Log of Spartina for its focus on the very essential direct interaction with the sea. You don’t have to build your own boat to do what he is doing. I don’t think you can just read online and get enough, you have to go out on the water.
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The news comes in of Frank Butler’s death. Frank started Catalina Yachts and ran it for more than 50 years. He was one of the most successful designers and builders. Scuttlebutt Sailing News has a nice article about him. How many customers got introduced to sailing with a Catalina boat that many times was cheaper and had more positive features than the competition. Plus, Butler didn’t advertise, he let his competitors get customers into the brokerages and then let the customers choose his boats over his competitors boats. Free advertising. There was a lot of anti-Catalina chatter, not seaworthy, cheap consumer boats. But Catalinas turned out to be robust and good sailers, race winners, and the customers came back for another boat and another boat. Now I have an example of his third boat, the Catalina 30, an early model circa ‘78, I like it.
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Captain Ford Smith who I crewed for for several deliveries surprisingly showed up in the boatyard. The scuttlebutt is that he and a certain female captain absconded into the Caribbean. Her former partner was still in the boatyard, so neither Ford or his new crew could come back here without some worry. He is delivering a sailboat to Panama City, FL and should have a good beginning with NE winds and fair skies.
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The Catalina 30, SUNSPLASH, came with a large jib that was bagged up, and according to the previous owners, was too big to fly on the headstay, so they hoisted it like an asymmetrical. Today I spread it out in the yard and Radio Bill measured it. Thanks Bill. It measures withing the range of jibs and genoas for the Catalina 30 according to Sailrite.com. Sailboatdata.com has forestay length at 41’ and this sail measures 35 feet 9 inches. The foot is a whopping 26 feet. The luff has the foam insert that allows the roller furler to roller reef the sail. I am not sure about U/V protection. Some sails have white U/V strip on the foot and leech so they look like there is no sunbrella on the sail.
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The battery desufator arrived and I’ve been using it. According to the instructions it could take 80 hours or more to desufate the batteries, if it works at all. So far the resting charge is about 1 ½ volts higher than it was before, but only 5.3 volts.
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The battery desufator is a smart charger that includes desulfation as one of its 7 steps in charging batteries. I found that it does the desulfation cycle for 27 minutes. The charger has to be unplugged from AC power and disconnected from the battery to reset. Then it starts up and runs through a couple initial steps before doing the desulfation. That consists of charge pulses that are supposed to break up the sulfate that has formed on the battery plates.
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The swimming ladder was a mess, having lost half of its steps. I had been using thin planks of cedar and cedar splits easily, so they fell apart. Now I bought some PVC planking and made new steps. The PVC planks are cracking. I may have to try again with thicker planks. The photo is of the new swimming ladder steps.