Sunday, November 2, 2025 —
The time changed today for Daylight Savings. Eric was up at 0500. While this was certainly not a sunrise photo, we thought we’d post a photo of how beautiful the marina was today with all the leaves turning pretty colors.
In good news, it looked like there was going to be a weather window to Bermuda on Wednesday. It wasn’t going to be great conditions, but it would be good enough. In anticipation of the passage, Eric spent the day getting the boat organized for our upcoming passage:
He repacked part of the forward stateroom (Keith’s room). Since we’ve been here so long, lots of stuff has come out of the cabinets. Getting it all back in was a challenge.
He checked the generator coolant, which meant moving stuff in the engine room out of the way so he could take the cover off. He also put an extra bilge pad under generator.
There was a little corrosion on the raw water pump, so he scraped it off and added a some anti-corrosion coating.
Eric put away a particular boat part that lived in a difficult to access location. That was a time consuming project.
Eric had quite a few spare parts stored in boxes that were held in place by a strap. The strap had died, so he installed new one.
Eric put a protective sheath, called split loom, around several of the Wakespeed (alternator regulator) wires. The split loom was supposed to protect against chafing and was also a fire supressor. He zip tied the wires more so they were more secure.
Christi made another trip to Safeway to stock up on supplies for the next six months. In the early evening, we went back to Sammy’s for dinner.
As was frequent around here, the sunset was mostly blocked by clouds.
In the evening, Tiki’s boatyard/marina hosted a party for the tenants. Tiki insisted that it would be okay for us to crash the party. It was a nice get together and we had a great time. Tiki was right — they were all happy to meet us and didn’t care that we weren’t in the marina.
In a crazy small world coincidence, we met a family from the San Francisco Bay Area with a daughter close in age to Keith. We mentioned that we’d lived in the Bay Area for a while and realized that we’d kept our boats in the same marina! Eric and Christi remembered their boat and they remembered ours. We had friends in common from the marina. None of us remembered meeting one another. But later, as Christi thought back on it, she did remember meeting them at the marina’s Christmas party. Keith didn’t remember their daughter, but the daughter remembers seeing Keith playing on Kosmos’s bow.
Monday —
Kosmos was last waxed in early June, so she was due for a waxing again in December. Eric realized that finding waxers in Caribbean could be a hassle and decided we should have the waxing done now. It would give him peace of mind if we didn’t have to worry about waxing during the cruising season.
This morning, a crew of six from Prestige Yacht Management came. They waxed the boat and also cleaned the carpets. We’d wanted them to do the upholstery, too, but they weren’t equipped for upholstery, just carpets. They did an amazing job and got it done in one day.
In the morning, Eric picked up the paravane fish. We wish we’d taken a before photo so that people could really appreciate how good of a job they did. Eric determined that they did indeed do a better job than he could have and it was worth the money.
After Christi and Keith finished school, Christi ran errands. Here was a shot of the road near the marina, which was getting more colorful every day.
The primary errand was to Target for general supplies. She also stopped by a specialty grocery store and a clothes store for more clothes for Keith. He keeps growing!
We’d made arrangements to meet Nina and David , who had hosted the party for the boat show volunteers a few weeks back, at Adam’s Taphouse and Grille for dinner. When we were arrived, we found out that we were at the wrong restaurant. Adam’s had two locations, one next to Sammy’s (where we were) and one in the center of Eastport. Oops! Much to our relief, we found parking with no problems, so we were only a little late.
Nina and David had raised their own children causing, so they could relate to our current cruising experience. We had a lovely dinner — the food was great and so was the company.
Tuesday —
We spent the day getting chores done so we were ready to go tomorrow. We haven’t reported on laundry facilities much on the blog because we usually use our own machine onboard. But Christi did use the marina’s laundry today to wash some bigger items that were tough to get into our little machine. There was only one washer and one dryer, but she was pleased to report that the machines worked well and were free!
One of the things that Christi had intended to wash was the bag of cleaning rags, which also had Eric’s coveralls in it. Christi had put them in a trash bag in the salon. When she went to grab the bag, she realized it was gone. The guys who cleaned the carpets must have thought it was trash and thrown it out yesterday. Argh.
Eric rigged the boom from dinghy more to paravane mode. If we needed to deploy them on the passage, they’d be ready to go.
A boat diver came in the early afternoon to clean the bottom. He said everything looked good down there.
After the diver left, the three of us went to Trader Joe’s to stock up on passage food. As we were leaving the store, we saw the full moon rising. It was enormous!
On the way back to Kosmos, we stopped by Fawcett to pick up the propellor. Much to Eric’s horror, the propellor had not arrived yet. But they did have the same version of the propellor that we already had in stock, so Eric bought that one, instead.
The twilight was visible tonight.
And here was the incredible full moon again, taken at dusk.
In the evening, Christi drove to Katie’s house. Christi and Katie had dinner at a restaurant called JB’s. They had a nice visit. One of the aspects of boating life that Christi struggled with was perpetually starting over with making friends.She really missed having stable people physically in her life. Our time in the Chesapeake has been wonderful for her since she got to spend time with Karen and Katie, both of whom she’s been friends with since she was a freshman in college. And seeing Scott, Special Blend, and Johnny and Joanne right before arriving in the Chesapeake had helped, too.
Meanwhile, Eric and Keith spent the evening with Tiki. While it’s true in boating life that you sometimes run into people again, their plans didn’t align with our plans, so it was unlikely we’d ever see them again. We were all sad about this since we’d become good friends over the last few weeks. Eric, Christi and Keith all agree that the hardest part of boating life was saying goodbye to the friends we’ve made.