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.
31 October 2024 | Somers Cove, Crisfield, MD
10 October 2024 | Somers Cove, Crisfield, MD
03 October 2024 | Somers Cove, Crisfield, MD
24 September 2024 | Somers Cove, Crisfield, MD
13 September 2024 | Somers Cove, Crisfield, MD
09 September 2024 | Somers Cove, Crisfield, MD
04 September 2024 | Somers Cove, Crisfield, MD
28 August 2024 | Somers Cove, Crisfield, MD
21 August 2024 | Belmar Beach, NJ
11 August 2024 | Somers Cove, Crisfield, MD
24 July 2024 | Somers Cove Marina, Crisfield, MD
08 July 2024 | Somers Cove Marina, Crisfield, MD
25 June 2024 | Somers Cove, Crisfield, MD
12 June 2024 | Somers Cove, Crisfield, MD
03 June 2024 | Somers Cove, Crisfield, MD
25 May 2024 | Somers Cove, Crisfield, MD
21 May 2024 | Somers Cove, Crisfield, MD
12 May 2024 | Somers Cove, Crisfield, MD
09 May 2024 | Somers Cove, Crisfield, MD
01 May 2024 | St. Marys, GA
Recent Blog Posts
31 October 2024 | Somers Cove, Crisfield, MD

Departure

I had bought a package of meatloaf meat, a mixture of beef, pork, and veal, because it was on manager’s sale. That meant it had to be cooked right away. I didn’t really have a plan for this meat. I ended up making it into hamburger mix and fried 4 cheeseburgers, one of which I had for breakfast [...]

10 October 2024 | Somers Cove, Crisfield, MD

Head Chef

I dawdled as usual in the morning on another overcast day, made a BLbfhT sandwich, it is a BLT with crispy black forest ham instead of bacon. Phone calls kept coming in, mainly due to the effects of Hurricane Helene. People called me to find out what the local conditions were in St Marys, GA, but I [...]

03 October 2024 | Somers Cove, Crisfield, MD

Pork Chop Hull

The Nao Trinidad was back in town and I discretely went about the marina looking for any of the crew, wondering if I would find any I remembered or conversely, if I would find anyone recognize me. We cooked a huge roast for them when they were in St. Marys, GA, last fall.

24 September 2024 | Somers Cove, Crisfield, MD

Nao Trinidad Redux

Another cheap Chinese car adapter came in, TPMS, Tire Pressure Monitoring System. Atoto has an adapter and 4 tire sensors for about $75. Others are available down to the 40 dollar range. The one I purchased does not pair with the Atoto radio, it has its own solar powered monitor that mounts with double [...]

13 September 2024 | Somers Cove, Crisfield, MD

Atoto ODB2

I was excited about the new car stereo coming in and also the NY Jets first game of the season. The Jets fizzled. The radio is installed in Cornelia Marie's old Honda CRV. It isn't as impressive as it was in the Shanty connected to the internet, but it does what I want, and the stereo is quite good. . An [...]

09 September 2024 | Somers Cove, Crisfield, MD

Atoto Success

After selling my Miata about 5 years ago I have not owned a car up till now. I would rent a vehicle whenever I needed one. My Miata had a simple car radio, but it was an oldie. The rentals had increasingly sophisticated radios, or more correctly communication devices. Cornelia Maries's old Honda [...]

D4 Launchie

23 April 2024 | St Marys, GA
Cap'n Chef Andy | Summer
The laptop pooped the bed, so I have to scurry around with alternatives. Not as bad as typing on the phone.
.
I flipped the dinghy over and positioned it to work on the inside. The epoxy was going off in the heat almost imme⁰diately, so I moved the epoxy workstation under the catamaran, in the shade. A mix of "glue hard", colloidal silica with some fiberglass mill ends in epoxy, was smooshed under the ends of the seats and any place that might need some extra reinforcement. The temperature was soaring and I took breaks in between the work.
.
The areas under the seats and in the bow and stern were painted with Rustoleum gloss white with a brush, then a Chinese roller was used to paint all the flat areas. Finally I painted the inboard surfaces of the bow and stern transoms with some of the leftover gloss almond paint.
.
The next day I put another coat of white on the interior. It was hot and the paint dried almost immediately. I was having heat problems and took many rest breaks during all this. After putting on the second coat of white and taking a break I decided to install the oarlocks. The procedure is to drill a fine drill that the screws of the installation will follow, but drill again with a large drill, not too deep, which will get filled with epoxy and fiberglass mill ends. The idea is that the screws will get into the deep fine holes and be encapsulated with the epoxy mixture elsewhere. I used some JB Weld structural epoxy because I didn't need too much and it said it was rated for 2 tons. I mixed it with "Glue Hard" and put the oarlocks on the rub rails. Gunwales.
.
Heat has a bad effect on me. I can work for 5 minutes and then have to take about 10-15 minutes break. Chest pains could be an after effect from the Ole Mole Chili Dogs. Take a break, drink some more warm water.
.
I drilled more holes in the bow and stern transom. I needed something to grab at the bow and also at the stern. I also needed a lifting harness to bring this dinghy on board, using one of the halyards. My solution was to drill two holes at the bow and stern and thread a 3/8" line all around, tie in a good square knot. I could use the lines to lift the dinghy and if we were going to bring the dinghy to the water, there was now a grip line at the bow and stern.
.
I ran across a 2 hour interview with Greg Lemond on YouTube and could watch it while I was waiting for other things. His story is one of calamity. Recovering from leukemia. He's the reason many of us, me included, got more serious into cycling back in the 80's and 90's. He was gifted and just burst his way into international cycling, from America, no one else could do what he did. He challenged and beat Bernard Hinault, the French national champion, who was duplicitous. Americans were not held in regard by the French. Lemond beat Hinault, suffered a broken wrist, and while recuperating was shot by shotgun by his brother-in-law while hunting turkey. He only survived because a police helicopter was in the area.
.
However unlikely it may seem, after being dropped by his sponsors, Lemond recovered. He was way out of shape and recovering from massive shotgun wounds, but he kept riding his bicycle. He went on to win a total of 3 Tour de Frances and a couple of World Championships. When he was not doing that well bicycle racing, he thought he had some kind of ailment. It turned out that cyclists were starting to use sophisticated doping. He quit when he could no longer compete.
.
The next day I thought I would put the dinghy in and give it a row. The tide was out. It was hot again. I was out of bread and had a ham and cheese omelet for breakfast. I decided to wait for a high tide. Wouldn't be one till after 8PM.
.
I had a reel of 3/8" dacron double braid line. The reel broke and the line became a snarl, all 70 fathoms of the remainder. I had tried to unsnarl the snarl and had some of it gathered snarl free and hung on the back of the dinghy. What a mess.
.
What I learned from the bos'n's in the Navy was to flake out the line, all of it. There's no short cut. That's what I did with the first portion that I hung on the dinghy. Tedious. You take the bitter end and begin freeing it from the snarl. 70 fathoms is a long piece of line and of course you can't do all that in the heat at an advanced age. I left the bunch on the dinghy and started with the other end, hard to find in the snarl. After a while I was pulling out the bitter end and a length of line and flaking it down on the gravel of the boatyard. Then go back and pull it all through the snarl, maybe getting another yard of line out of it and having to flake it all down. Do it again. The heat would get to me and I could sit in the shade and work on the computer.
.
The hard drive I had been using crashed after I erroneously swapped it while getting some books from another drive, Australian anthropology books.
.
We focus on the ice age in North America, because it had a huge impact here. Meanwhile in Australia the First Nation, the Aborigines, not only lived and created oral tradition that exists now, but it was created during the ice ages, when Tasmania was connected to the mainland, and other places had stories about when the sea levels were lower.
.
One oral tradition concerned a volcanic eruption of 3 craters. It happened 39 thousand years ago. A stone axe was found buried under the ash of the eruptions.
.
The Aborigines have a concept called Dreamtime. It's like something that has existed for a very long time. Humans come and go in and out of the Dreamtime, sometimes go to it when they sleep. Their stories from long ago in the past center not on the people in the stories but the locations they travel through. This makes certain locations sacred.
.
Going after some of these books crashed the hard drive that had all my recent stuff. Ephemeral.
.
I panicked. My hard drive was dead. I had a spare chassis that I had given Cornelia Marie, but she gave it back, unused and not fully charged. I had that hard drive, which I thought was a clone of mine, and another older drive. I was facing an end of my endless amassed digital data. I appealed to Komputer Ken, I need the Navigatrix installation drive. He tossed it down to me.
.
So I spent the time between unsnarling the 70 fathoms of line and trying to get my computer situation back. I found out I was missing a little harness on one of the hard drives. I had to use my defunct hard drive on a USB adapter to transfer files off of it, the ones that are indispensable. I had to make sure, the drive would be wiped and everything on it would be erased. The files were saved onto Cornelia Marie's hard drive. To use the hard drive on the laptop as a boot device it's best to have it installed in what's called a hard drive caddy. To use a hard drive as an external storage device it's best to use a USB3 adapter and not have the drive in the caddy. I had to be careful which drive was which.
.
Eventually all was restored, but there was still a bunch of snarled line to unsnarl. The next day I unsnarled the rest of the line and begged for a ride to Harbor Freight to get a reel to wind up 70 fathoms of line. I bought two reels, one for the line and another for the 75 foot collapsible garden hose that will be put away when I leave for Crisfield.
.
I borrowed a hand truck and used it to haul the dinghy to the dock after dumping out rainwater. We had had a serious front come through with lightning and high winds. The rain drenched my hoodie that I had left out. I twisted it against the boat cradle next door to get the water out and then left it in the now blue sky and sun to dry. The dinghy was unceremoniously cast into the water and led around the docks to a floating dock where I could climb into it. I went back and got the oars and oarlocks. A fellow was at the dinghy and wanted to talk about it. I got in and rowed about 500 feet to the dinghy dock where I tied it up.
.
This was the first time in the water and I was curious about how it would trim out because I had substituted a copy of Chesapeake Light Craft's seating arrangement and I thought the middle seat was now too far forward. It turned out to be OK. If I had a passenger in the dinghy or a bunch of water and groceries it would trim out perfectly. As it was now with just me in it, the transom was not in the water, but the point of the transom, the keel, was immersed. The dinghy rowed easily. If I had a sailing rig on it, it would trim out perfectly. I dragged it up on the dinghy dock. People are so polite, even in a coarse boatyard. Your dinghy looks fabulous. Yeah, right.
.
I had to take a break. Komputer Ken said he and Steve the Environmentalist were going to test their ARK, a remote controlled water vehicle that consumes trash from the water, later around 7PM.
.
At around 6 I decided to go back to the dinghy, I was eager to try it out again. A kid was down on the dinghy dock, one of the twins from the big catamaran in the river. He had toilet paper and masking tape over his thumb. He had cut himself and that was his makeshift bandage. He wanted a ride out to the catamaran. I had no lifejacket on board and really didn't know how the dinghy would behave, although so far it was OK. We got in and began to row across the river to the big catamaran.
.
There was a problem I noted, the rough Polish rustic oars I had made were jumping out of the oarlocks from time to time. Nothing was tied down and I was afraid of losing the oarlocks overboard. When we got to the catamaran they onboard were getting ready to go ashore in their high powered inflatable (deflatable) dinghy. His dad was holding his left arm close to his body. I stabbed myself he said. Like father like son. The kid climbed into the inflatable and they sped off to the dock we had just come from.
.
I rowed back and tied up. I brought the oars and oarlocks back to Kaimu and the tools. The oarlocks had pins that could be driven through the shafts of the oars. Then you could lose an oar and an oarlock, but you wouldn't lose a loose oarlock. I drilled and pinned the oarlocks to the oars and added some clevis pins to secure them.
.
I went back and rowed across the river to my old C&C 24, Trillium, which had been neglected by its next two owners. The sail cover was in tatters, the sail exposed to U/V. I rowed back and met Steve and Ken and their environmental craft. There were others gathering for a test of the remote controlled environment saving craft.
.
The tattoo artist was there with a Stand Up Paddleboard with an electric jet drive, scooting around, showing off. A photographer was there with a drone following all the action. The ARK went across the river with its flashing lights, a suction mouth would drop into the water and a big paddle wheel would spin and throw surface water that would go through the device and be filtered or otherwise analyzed and returned to the environment. The drone followed all the way across and back. Impressive flight time.
.
I had been out in the dinghy, but the gnats, the no-see-um's, were pestering and I docked the dinghy and called it quits. I took a few photos of the ARK and the sunset.
.
The image is of the dinghy at the dinghy dock.
Comments

About & Links

SailBlogs Groups