Kosmos Travel Log

Yesterday morning, we saw a pod of dolphins playing at the bow. There were only 5 or 6 and they didn’t stay long, just a couple of minutes. They were tiny little guys, the smallest dolphins we have ever seen.

The waves were mildly uncomfortable in the early hours of the morning, and as the day progressed, the waves got bigger and bigger. By the afternoon it was definitely well into the “uncomfortable” category, not quite at “miserable”, but close. Eric got sick. His body just doesn’t do well in the lurching head seas. We had to lower the RPMs by 200 because we were just hitting the waves too hard at the higher speed. We were only doing 4.8 knots, abysmally slow for 1700 RPM.

Today the ride started off just a touch better than yesterday. In the afternoon, the sea (more…)

We have a confession to make. As you all know, when we crossed the Pacific Ocean on our 21 day passage from San Diego to Nuka Hiva, the blog postings were in real time. We didn’t want anyone to worry about us, so we seriously downplayed how miserable we were during that passage. Now that the blogs are no longer in real time, we feel no need to underreport. By the time an entry gets posted about ugly seas, we are already safely in a port, so no one needs to worry.

A secondary reason we downplayed our misery on that first passage was because we were novice blue water travelers, and we didn’t want to sound whiny. We figured that (more…)

We’ll start with the only scary event on the passage so far. Yesterday afternoon we saw a boat ahead of us in the distance coming towards us. We changed course. It was still coming towards us. We changed course some more. It was still coming towards us. It turned out to be (more…)

Our good attitude about the “miserable” sea conditions didn’t last long. We were still very aware that it could be worse, but the fact of the matter is it is hard to maintain a good attitude when you are in such misery. Human nature. Sea conditions were identical as reported when we left. The good news is neither of us got sea sick, although (more…)

08’ 50S by 121’ 30.8E - Flores Islands was conquered by the Portuguese prior to being taken over by the Dutch, hence the name. Flores, like Timor, has a large Christian population as a result of Portuguese missionary efforts. Before the Portuguese arrived, the natives of Flores had already been conquered by the kingdom of a nearby island, Sulawesi. The natives of Flores comprise five separate cultural groups that did not have a lot of interaction with one another due to the rugged terrain that made travel between areas extremely difficult.

The island of Flores came into view several hours before we arrived. At first it reminded us of the Marquesas, with large, dramatic volcanic mountains, the highest of the peaks enshrouded in mist. But as we got closer we saw that, while green with a lot of vegetation, the mountains are not nearly as lush as the Marquesas. Ende is a port town on the south side of the island with 80,000 inhabitants. It is nestled in a bay protected by a peninsula that juts out. As we rounded the peninsula, we were amazing to see that there was a smoking volcano next to us on the shore. The highest peak wasn’t the one smoking, it was a smaller peak only half the size, maybe 500 feet tall. The smoke has a yellowish tint. There are yellow stains around the crest from the sulfur and a jagged line of reddish looking dirt with no vegetation that runs down the face, likely from where lava once flowed down.

Once we rounded the corner (more…)