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 [...]

How Do You Spell Mousakka?

12 April 2022 | St. Marys, GA
Cap'n Chef Andy | mild
I tried to make my morning omelet with some fried tomatoes but it turned into a big mess. The free bread from the Salvation Army was a baguette that looked like it might be whole wheat, but it was white bread with a crusty coating. It was a mess to eat, but very tasty.
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I had put patches on a couple of deflated air mattresses and now could inflate them and see if they held air. They seemed to. Eloisa came over and asked what I wanted to do. I said I would bike up to the Breezeway to meet her. I then realized I needed to talk to Jacques, from Quebec, about his Universal M25 diesel motor, the motor that replaced the Atomic 4 in the Catalina 30. He was asking $1000 for it, which is a bargain if it runs. Robert, and before him Chris the Australian, were interested in buying it, but Robert didn’t have the cash on hand and Chris was off sailing.
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I went to Jacques boat in the North end of the yard and slapped on his hull. He came down and showed me the engine. It wasn’t frozen, he said it ran well when he removed it to repower with a larger engine. Some thieves had taken off some hoses and some of his exhaust parts. I offered him $800 and he accepted. Would he take a check? We discussed payment options and decided that I would pay toward his boatyard rental bill. We looked around for Rocky, boatyard owner, general manager, and chief crane operator. We wanted to let him know about this payment plan and get his OK.
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They were putting a large yacht in the South end of the yard on jackstands, very busy. He finally came over to see what was up and agreed to accept my money. Of course.
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Eloisa and I drove to buy polarized sunglasses, but so far she hadn’t found a pair that she liked at any of the stores we visited. This is an ongoing search. We went to the Salvation Army to donate clothing, and there was free bread, yes get me another baguette. She had to do some laundry and next door is the Wee Pub which has outside covered seating where patrons can smoke cigarettes or bring their pets. We ended up there with Blue, her black American cocker. She got sweet potato fries which were coated with cinnamon sugar, too sweet, and came with dipping sauce. I had merlot. Blue had some of the fries.
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Rocky’s sister was there and she was a hoot. She was talking on the phone and to any patrons coming and going. She was hiring for her business, not sure exactly what it is. She had a little dog along with her, looked like a puppy, but it was 13 years old. Blue and her dog didn’t do much, no fighting, no running around.
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The forecast was for thunderstorms and high winds. The high winds came but no storms. I had leftover Nachos Lebre to consume and enjoyed more wine with it. I contemplated expenditures of $5,500 in the next few days and transferred more money into my account to avoid any shortfall.
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I used the awesome chinese knife sharpening tool on another knife. This one was more expensive than the dollar store knife and said Kitchen Aide, maybe a chinese knock off. It took a good edge. I tested it on the half tomato leftover and it cut a fine sliver. Could probably make it even sharper.
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I had trouble sleeping and spent the night doing games on the lovely Galaxy phone. One game my daughter got me to try was Wordle. You get 6 guesses at the Wordle word and in each guess you get your letters of your entry colored. Green if they are the right letter in the right position, brown or bronze if they are a letter in the word but not in correct position, and black if they are not in the word at all. Although I could send her a couple of wordles that were maybe one better than her guesses, today’s wordle was solved in 6 tries by me and 3 tries by her. I texted to her, better to be lucky than good.
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I was unlucky with the bug that was going around. I felt lousy. I cancelled any cooking or other work. I had trouble sleeping again and when I awoke I knew I had to hightail it to the porta-jon. The day continued like this, no Pizza Night, no Chicken Cacciatorre. I had to stay nearby to the loo.
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Eventually I made coffee and took my meds and supplements. I had no appetite. I ate an apple. I brought down a bunch of salad ingredients for Eloisa to make a salad, but she instead made wraps of romaine with salmon and slices of roma tomatoes.
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The news in the boatyard was that Radio Bill was on his way by air from Italy and would arrive late at night. Cap’n Webb Chiles contacted me about getting in touch with the boatyard to schedule hauling out his little but mighty sloop, Gannet. I found Rocky, chief crane operator, running heavy equipment and relayed to him, then back to Webb, no problem on space in the yard, make a firm schedule closer to arrival, which would be in about 3 weeks. Will I be in the yard then?
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I received a nice text from the Bad Crowd in Crisfield. Looks like they are up to their old tricks. I have been pondering my trip up there, hopefully aboard Kaimu, along with the Universal diesel M25 and the mainsheet arch, both for Sunsplash, the Catalina 30.
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The ingredients I had purchased to make Chicken Cacciatorre, but was unable to cook due to illness, started to go bad. The chicken had sat out a bit and some animal had chewed on the package. Two boxes of mushrooms became infested with gnats and started to decompose. This morning when I opened the fridge there was a pool of brown liquid at the bottom and a horrible smell. I took the decomposing stuff out to the dumpster. Yuck. In the condemned communal kitchen the trash can was at least an equal to the stuff from the fridge. How can it smell that bad after only a month? I disposed of that into the dumpster too.
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So, the money I spent to make an economic meal was thrown away and I continued to spend on expensive restaurant food and wine. We took Radio Bill to the corner gas station restaurant and ran up a tab. Good to catch up after a year or so. We downed two pitchers of Yuengling beer.
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Eloisa was playing a blues number using pandora and commented that when she was operating the tour boat she had a cd boxed set called 25 Years of Rounder Records, including bluegrass, blues, Louisiana music, country, and a bonus disc with lots of tracks on it. I found the boxed set online for about $35 and ordered it. I used my SONY boom box, that plays CD’s, and she began playing music and dancing. It was now already worth $35. I spent the morning copying all the discs to the laptop while chatting on the phone. Afterwards I found Windows merely creates folders not filled with music, but filled with links to the CD’s, and are ineffective unless the CD is available. The correct procedure was to use Windows Media Player to recognize the CD, then click RIP the CD to copy the music to a folder in the music library. Apparently it doesn’t access metadata so the tracks come up as unknown album and unknown artist.
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I created a directory tree on my phone. I found that the music player apps only look at internal storage, so I put the tree there. The main folder was 25yrsRounderRecords, the inside that folder were BONUS, Bluegrass, Louisiana, Hillbilly, and Blues. It was necessary to create the folders because all the discs came up the same, as unknown album, unknown artist, and track numbers 1 through whatever, so there would be a conflict with every track #1 being copied, for instance, unless they were copied to separate folders. The folder names helped identify what kind of music was in them.
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I tried to copy to Eloisa’s iphone, but could not access the file structure using my linux laptop. We used my phone with a power cable to her cigarette lighter plug and bluetoothed the music to her bluetooth speaker. I used the audify music player app and set it to shuffle play. We headed out and about. Fuel is expensive now, so we burn it up riding around in an aimless travel to buy polarized sunglasses, look for bike carriers to carry Blue along with us, and end up at the Riverside Cafe where we were unable to get an outside table for late lunch just the day before. Now we had that table and Eloisa ordered stuffed eggplant and I ordered the cheapest item on the menu, grilled cheese sandwich. The price became more respectable when I added ham to the cheese and rye as the bread for the sandwich, and a cup of soup.
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After having thrown out the main ingredients for Chicken Cacciatorre I now had to resupply. We went to the market, then Ace hardware looking for a folding chair for his Highness, Blue, then to the library where tax documents were printed out.
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Back in the boatyard I grabbed my ingredients to prep and the big 14 cup skillet with irridescent handles. After washing the skillet I filled it with deskinned chicken thighs. The 10 thighs just fit, kind of squished together. A large onion was diced over them along with 3 sweet peppers that needed some spot cut away. A half box of mushrooms was coarsely sliced and “A touch of Rome” spice was dashed over it all. I removed the skillet to Kaimu’s galley and put it on a high flame to get started. I knew I had a can of Cento peeled tomatoes somewhere and when I found it I found a small jar of minced garlic. In they went. The tomatoes had to be cut up once in the skillet to allow room for the lid. I turned the heat down and went biking with Blue to look for Eloisa.
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Her bike was back at Kaimu, so we meandered through the yard and went for a leisurely bike ride through Land’s End, nearby neighborhood. Blue always hangs back on the way out and then leads at the front on the way back. What a beautiful day. I returned to check on the concoction on the stove, decant a liter of wine, and write some more on this blog. Eloisa went to take a nap and said maybe she should get her own dog someday. Blue was settled down under Kaimu’s keel, not at all bothered that his mistress was going away.
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I let the cacciatorre chicken reduce with the lid off. It was too much like soup now. Time was ticking off. At a quarter to six, which was when I said dinner would be ready, I grabbed the romaine hearts and the vinaigrette dressing and a salad bowl and went to the foul kitchen. Eloisa was there to help. She went to get something and I made the salad with the week old lettuce and the dressing. Mmm, not bad.
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We brought things to the stone table, donated plastic silverware, wine in a plastic 1 litre water bottle, plates and bowls, bowl of prepared salad, and finally the big skillet of chicken with a ladle to dish it out. It was just us two, plus Blue, and he got fed with the salad and the chicken, Lucky doggie.
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Radio Bill came around and ate, He discussed some kitchen sort of contraption he was working on, he’s good at making things that work. Coming from Italy and saying my chicken concoction was good was a nice compliment. We had our little circle, Robert didn’t show up, but Haichi did, and we fed him to reduce the howling, Lynn and Dave didn’t show up. Not too many bugs. Got chilly. Maybe it’s time to shut down now that the sun is going down.
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We had to go, Eloisa and Radio Bill helped get things organized and I volunteered to do the dishes, not that much, a salad bowl, 3 other bowls, a dish, and not much else. We hung around and talked as it grew darker. Chilly, not too many bugs. I had to go get more wine and a wind breaker. I had only tee shirt and shorts. Afterwards we went back to our boats. I began writing. There was a dog howling.1
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It was Blue, not returned to his mom, hanging below my boat and barking at anyone who came near. How protective. I texted and I rode with him to the vamper, where Eloisa was preparing for bed. We had a long talk.
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The next day was a wind storm. The chicken cacciatorre leftovers had been sitting on deck, but it was chilly enough overnight to fridge the chix. I had to transfer to a smaller pot which had to be cleaned first, then the big skillet had to be cleaned. It was time for me to clash heads with the windows computer and its inability to do its job. After I ran the laptop’s battery down, and that takes some, I put it on charge and was done with it for a while. Down below in the boatyard Eloisa showed up with Jamaican curry. It was vegetable. I had just eaten my favorite ham and cheese omelet on tomato and rye bread. I got to eat a bowl, a small portion, it was very tasty but also filling. She wanted to get out of the boatyard, it was a dust storm, swirling whirling dervishes, grit in your curry. Well, where do you want to go, the park, it’s gonna be open and windy there, why not Pirate’s Point, it’s protected. We ended up at the Point, Rick’s, not in Casablanca, in North River Marsh.
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The wind was really killing. I had a red wine and Eloisa ordered two glasses of water, one with lime. Blue got one of the glasses after she went off and got his shiny metal bowl for water. The birds, especially the buzzards, did their work in a tumultuous atmosphere, swirling, their soaring arcs truncated as they corrected their flight plan up there to cope with the gusts and surges. The trees, very green now, etched against the deep blue sky, again, all we had to do is sit there and look. But.
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The Pirate’s Point, which is where we were, has an audio system. There are audio systems and there are audio systems. This one was really bad. I have no hearing anymore, so if something is bad, it has to be really bad for me to notice. I noticed right away. When Rick came out I talked to him about the audio and we looked at his system. He had had, and overcome, covid. He had loss of smell and taste, not a good deal for a restaurantuer. I liked to cut some of the controls back to mid range to eliminate the bass speakers topping out. It’s like some neighborhood yahoo blasting his stereo that was now completely damaged. Rick returned some of the controls to where they were and disregarded some of the equalizer settings I had made.
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Eloisa had fish and chips and eventually we had to return to the boatyard. For a while we were Rick’s only customers and then there were a few that came in as we left. Not a thriving business today. Back at the boatyard I fried a couple of pork chops with creole seasoning and diced them and added them to Eloisa’s tasty Jamaican curry. Very filling.
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The next day I cleaned up the galley somewhat and made a pork chop and potato casserole with tomato sauce, garlic, and more creole seasoning. We had a nice meal with romaine vinaigrette and of course wine.
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Pizza Night came after a two week hiatus due to illness. I wanted to recreate the crust I made, it was the best so far. My routine now is put 3 cups of flour in a bowl and pour in cups of warm water, drizzle some honey, and add yeast. Whisk the ingredients to the consistency of pancake batter, important to mix as much as possible. Let it stand for half an hour, then add two more cups of flour. I then knead the dough thoroughly for about ten minutes. It takes that long to get all the flour moist and give the dough some strength. Then I cut it into 4 pieces, ball them up in bowls with olive oil covering them. Leave for 2 hours or so, then make your pies.
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We had an unusual crowd and there was no leftover pizza. Big Dave, Helicopter Dave, Roughrider Lynn, Eloisa, Robert, and of course the two dogs. The dough did come out as good as last time, nice to receive compliments.
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The next day would have been a good day to do some work on the boat, but Eloisa suggested going to the beach, and we had such a good time last time, why not. We took the back road into Fernandina and found an ice cream shop. It was good, neat place with old live oaks and tons of Spanish moss hanging down. We continued up the beach to our favorite spot, right where A1A makes a right angle turn. The bistro is called the Sandbar. $22 for a bottle of nice pinot noir. Zen ocean landscape. We had a very nice time again.
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My idea was to make mousakka, like I had made it many years ago. The Optima oven looks like a bundt pan, and that is what I made my mousakka in way back then. I remember getting the recipe out of the taste principle cookbook, which I thought I now had a newer copy. But there was no mousakka in the new cookbook. I searched for recipes online and ended up with a NYTimes recipe, and it was the same recipe I had used long ago. It’s demanding, but the results are well worth it. A purple oval of baked eggplant skins, underneath a spiced mixture of lamb and eggplant. It rests on a sort of custard that bakes on top of the rest, then ends up on the bottom when you invert the baking mold. There is additional tomato sauce that is in the meat mixture and also used as a gravy. Kind of like a Greek meatloaf.
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The photo was taken shortly before no-see-ums made off with the photographer.
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