Friday, October 7, continued… After the museum, we headed back to Kosmos. We noticed that most of the piles of mud were gone, and realized that we hadn’t seen the soldiers in a few days. 

In the late afternoon, it rained. There was a stunning double rainbow.

When we were exploring the area south of the marina, we’d noticed a sushi place that only did take-away (to-go) orders. Eric decided to order dinner there and bring it back to the boat. All of their rolls were deep fried. Since Keith doesn’t eat fish, Eric ordered him a chicken burrito, which was also deep fried. Eric and Christi both preferred the sushi at Yamai Y Li.

The harbor improvement project had put a lot of dust into the air, so even though we’d washed Kosmos on Tuesday, Wednesday, and again on Thursday, she’d needed another washing. It was a fairly hard rain, so at first we were pleased that Mother Nature washed the boat for us. That was until we went outside to do some drying, when we were horrified to see that the rain had left Kosmos filthy! Fortunately, we were able to easily wipe up most of the dirt with rags.

The sunset was dramatic. Christi thinks the clouds look like a bird in-flight.

On Saturday morning, we saw the fuel truck was at the fuel dock! We were so relieved! Two days ago, OPEC had announced they were cutting oil production in order to drive up prices. After hearing that, we’d become a bit anxious about fueling up before an likely price increase. And now we could!

We do want to mention that so far we’ve used more fuel than we’d originally anticipated. There are three reasons why: Part of the extra fuel consumption was from running faster than our preferred 1600 RPMs. On the passage down from San Diego, we’d run at 1750 RPM in order to reduce passage time, and there have been a few passages within the Sea of Cortez where we ran above 1600 for various reasons.

But the majority of the excess fuel consumption has come from running our generator much more than we’d ever expected, which we did for two reasons. The first was air conditioning. Even though Baja is always hot in the summer, this year the entire southwest had record heat. It’s not only been hotter than normal, its also been more humid, and it’s been the humidity that has driven us to run the AC. The other was our fresh water leak. We’d needed to make more water than we’d expected to compensate for the leak. Now that the leak is fixed and the weather is starting to cool off, we’re hoping that our generator usage goes back to normal.

Saturday was another chores day. It again rained in the afternoon. Much to our frustration, the rain again left Kosmos dirty, though not as dirty it had been yesterday. Christi cooked and we ate onboard. The nearly full moon rose before the sun had set, and was glowing golden in the twilight.

Sunrise Sunday morning

We headed over to the fuel dock first thing on Sunday morning. Fuel came out to $5.26 per gallon (24.85 pesos per liter plus 12.3% dock fee). We believe this is the most we’ve ever paid for fuel. However, our friends in San Diego said that diesel was more like $7.00 per gallon there, so we weren’t complaining. Here is Eric manning the pump aboard Kosmos.

After getting secured back in our slip, Eric checked the transfer filter and confirmed that it did not need to be changed. Then he started polishing the fuel, which takes 10 hours per tank.

In the afternoon, we went back to Terco’s for lunch. Eric ordered chicken fajitas, which are strips of chicken, strips of bell pepper and strips of onion fried together and served on a sizzling plate. They are usually accompanied with tortillas, guacamole, salsa and beans to make your own tacos.

After lunch, we went to the big box supermarket specifically to get containers of ice cream, which we had not seen at Daylia’s. In the evening, Christi and Keith went to the pool.

Tonight was day one of the full moon (in another astronomical rarity, this particular full moon was going to last more than 24 hours, so we’d have two nights of full moon). When it first came up over the horizon, it was enormous and red. As it got higher in the sky, it looked more yellow and smaller. Eric took the first photo zoomed in from the dock. Christi took the second photo from the sea wall on the west side of the harbor entrance.