Friday, December 6  — As mentioned in the last post, the sea conditions were not bad when we left Ensenada on Tuesday night. Despite the good conditions, Keith did initially get sick. But within 12-hours, he was feeling good enough to play video games

When dawn finally broke on Wednesday, we saw it was 3 – 5 foot waves with a 10-second swell period + 1 – 2 foot wind chop waves. Thanks to the long enough intervals in between the waves, it wasn’t uncomfortable. The wind was light, came from behind us, and it was overcast all day. 

Unfortunately, we were moving very slowly, only averaging 5.7 knots at 1650 RPM. Eric eventually sped us up to 1750 RPM, but our speed only improved to 5.8 knots. He’s concerned that we have a net or kelp or line stuck to our propellor or stabilizer fins that is slowing us down. He was considered stopping in Turtle Bay to dive on the bottom.

In exciting news, the main engine odometer rolled up 42,000 nautical miles!

On Wednesday evening, the conditions began to worsen, making the ride a bit on the uncomfortable side. We definitely needed to hold onto the boat to move around. Here is a short video of the waves from dawn on Thursday:

It was another gloomy, overcast day. Fortunately, not long after dawn, the conditions slowly began to improve again. By evening it was back to being good. 

Our speeds continued to be abnormally slow given the RPM, which has Eric concerned. He became increasingly convinced that we had something caught on the stabilizer fins. At one point in the day, he had turned off the stabilizers and put Kosmos in reverse, hoping that the loss of tension on the fin combined with the water pushing from a different direction would dislodge whatever may have been caught on the fins. He didn’t see anything float away, and our speed did not improve. He sped us up to 1800 RPM, but we were still only averaging 6 knots. Sunset photo:

We passed Turtle Bay after dark, so there was no ducking in there to check the bottom. 

On Friday, morning, sea conditions were still nice: 4 – 5 foot waves with a 10-second swell period + 1 – 2 foot wind chop waves. It was a sunny, though slightly hazy, day. 

In the morning, Eric attempted the “back down” procedure again. This time, he kept Kosmos in reverse for longer. A big chunk of kelp floated off. Eric was delighted about seeing the kelp come off, but much to his dismay, our speed only improved to 6.2 knots at 1800 RPM – not nearly as much as it should have. 

A few hours later, he did another “back down,” running backwards faster and longer than the previous time. We didn’t see anything dislodge and float away. At first Eric was disappointed, as he was certain there was more kelp stuck to the prop or fin area. However, we did speed up to about 6.8 knots, so it must have worked and we simply missed seeing the dislodging. 

Sea conditions remained calm and clear all day and into the night. The crescent moon gave off a surprising amount of light. The stars were vibrant, and if it was warmer, we would have sat outside and done some stargazing. 

We’ve seen very few vessels the last few days, usually a couple of boats per day several miles out.

Eric wanted to add that he’s realized, in retrospect, that there was likely another solution to the stabilizer problem without having to buy a new up-converter. He could have tried to increase the alternator voltage from the new regulator. However, there was concern that the DC up-converter was going bad, so he is still glad that we bought a new up-converter. He’s also glad to not need to change parameters on the carefully set up LiFePo battery system (the new lithium iron phosphate batteries that we added), as the system is complex and it took quite a bit of trial and error to get all the parameters set properly.