On Wednesday, December 10, 2025, we woke up wondering if the Apocalypse had just happened.

While Christi and Keith did school, Eric removed the salinity probe and cleaned it. But it didn’t help — the sensor still wasn’t working. When he put it back, he tightened it as much as he could to ensure it didn’t leak.

We needed to go to the grocery store. We decided to go to shore at 1130, figuring that would give us enough time to have lunch and do our grocery shopping before the current was too strong in either direction. We somehow made a big mistake in calculations. Going in, the current was still strong. We made slow forward progress while the battery power was quickly sucked down. Eric had intended to bring a spare battery for the dinghy to be safe, but when we were about halfway to shore, he realized he’d forgotten it. From there on out, he was really anxious about getting stranded. We made it to the yacht club dinghy area with no problems. It was high tide, and the sea wall was again underwater.

We decided to get lunch at The Shipyard restaurant next to the pink store. In good news, the lady who sold baked goods was at the covered patio, so we were able to pick up some freshly made banana bread and other desserts. As we walked down the street, we noted the progress of the various construction projects that we’d seen back in April.

The Shipyard was closed, so we popped over to the pink store to get groceries. They also had an ongoing construction project on the property.

For those who may be reading this as a cruising guide, fellow cruisers have told us that the yellow store next to the airport had the best prices and smallest selection, the pink store was in the middle on both price and selection, and the blue store was the most expensive and had the best selection. There were some complaints of price gouging at both the pink and blue markets, but especially the blue market.

Even though Big Dog‘s was open, we decided not to have lunch there because they only took cash and, after paying the bakery lady, we didn’t think we had enough cash on us to cover the meal. Instead, we went back to yacht club for lunch.

The ride back to Kosmos was uneventful. The solar panels had charged the dinghy motor a bit while we were onshore and the current wasn’t as strong, so Eric wasn’t anxious about running out of power any more. This was the dusk.

On Thursday, a huge storm with loud thunder woke Eric and Christi up at 0400. Eric did eventually manage to fall back asleep, but Christi did not. Even though it was raining during dawn and the sunrise, it was another apocalyptic red morning. The red slowly evolved to orange and then gold.

The anchorage was a lot rockier today than it had been yesterday. The wind had shifted from the south to the southeast. On paper, it looked like the anchorage should still be fully protected, but somehow swells from the ocean were getting into the channel and creating waves. Between waking up so early and the rocking, Christi was sleepy all day.

While Christi and Keith did school, Eric ventured into the lazarette, where he took apart the water maker panel and adjusted the allowed salinity level to a much higher setting than it had been before. He was hoping that, since the sensor was reading the salinity as higher than it really was, he could get it to work by having it make “saltier” water. He tested the AC watermaker and it worked!

Eric was eager to get off the boat, but it was too windy to go to town. In the late afternoon, Eric saw some cruisers hanging out at one of the nearby beaches and joined them. Keith didn’t want to go and Christi was busy making dinner. As usual, we had a quiet night aboard.