Author Archives: Christi

Second Trip to Santa Rosalia, Day 4

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Monday, October 3 was a TLC for Kosmos day. Eric started the day by changing the generator impeller. Then he put away all the tools from oil change and impeller change projects, and stowed extra oil containers (Santa Rosalia doesn’t have any place to dispose of used oil). Christi and Keith started washing the boat as soon as the water was turned on. However, it was already hot, and they ran out of energy halfway through.

The last time we were in Santa Rosalia, we mentioned that our dive compressor was broken. At that point in time, we’d had about a tank and a half of air onboard, and Christi had continued to used it to clean the bottom until we ran out of air, which was a few days before the hurricane. Since Christi hadn’t been able to do the bottom in almost a month, we made arrangements through the marina to hire someone to do it. He came today.

We also got the bottled water issue straightened out. It was a simple miscommunication. Normally, the deliver the water, we dump it in the tanks right then, and they take the empty bottles back. The higher number was because they thought we wanted to keep the bottles.

The next thing on the to-do list was to walk to a store that sold oxygen to see if they could fill our SCUBA tanks. The shop was on Highway 1, not far past AutoZone. Unfortunately, they couldn’t help us, and told us there was no one in town that could.

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Second Trip to Santa Rosalia, Day 3

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When we woke up on Sunday, October 2, it was very windy. The wind was pleasantly cool and refreshing! Christi needed a jacket when she went out to watch the sunrise. Once the sun was up, the wind died and it warmed up fast.

Does anyone know what kind of bird this is?

Eric started changing the engine oil and filter first thing in the morning, as planned. Unfortunately, he’d failed to notice that a valve was set wrong, and accidentally drained out the transmission oil simultaneously with the engine oil. And then, unbeknownst to him, while filling the engine with oil, he was also simultaneously filling the transmission with engine oil. It didn’t take Eric long to figure out that the engine wasn’t filling up with oil proportional to the amount that he was putting in. That’s when he noticed the valve.

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Second Trip to Santa Rosalia, Day 2

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Saturday, October 1

In 2009, when we were in Dominica, our smoke stack fell over. The stack had bent a little bit at an outdoor connection of the smoke stack causing a small exhaust leak. Unfortunately, none of the repairs that Eric has made have held long-term; all of them have failed sooner or later. The trouble is the sealant eventually goes bad. We forgot to mention this, but a few days ago, when we were in Don Juan, he’d noticed that the leak was back. He was frustrated; he’d been sure that the last repair he’d done would last longer.

This morning, Eric repaired exhaust leak first thing. He tried a new sealant, and hopefully this fix will last a good amount of time. After that, he got everything out that he’d need to do an engine oil change so that he could do the change first thing tomorrow the morning, before it got hot. It actually takes longer to get everything out and ready than it does to actually change the oil. 

In the afternoon, we decided to get lunch at Los Compadres. From the roundabout, we took the other road inland, passing many more piles of mud.

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La Village de Bahia Los Angeles to Puerto Don Juan to Santa Rosalia

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Sunrise on Tuesday, September 27

We made two trips to shore. In the morning, we went to the grocery store run for perishables. In the afternoon, we had lunch at the motel restaurant. We haven’t been writing about the food lately because we generally only write about new foods to us. Living in San Diego, Mexican food is the staple of our diet, so we haven’t run across many foods that are new to us. But this time, there was something on the menu that we didn’t recognize: arrachera. Eric ordered it and found out that it was a marinated steak. The other items on his plate are a chili relleno (poblano chili stuffed with cheese, dipped in an egg batter and deep fried), rice and refried beans.

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