Category Archives: Boat Technical

Specifics about the boat.

V-Cove at Isla Carmen to Isla Coronados

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Here is a photo of the area we went snorkeling in on Saturday. We were in the small, shallow strait between Isla Carmen and the tiny rock island. The anchorage is just to the right (south) of where this photo ends.

On Sunday morning, it rained again. The rain didn’t last as long as it had yesterday, but it rained harder, so Kosmos got a good wash down. Undeterred by the heavy rain, the Erics went for a hike onshore.

They literally watched the flora and fauna come to life with the rain – flowers blooming and bugs and lizards coming out of hiding. 

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Puerto Escondido Days 3 – 6

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On Sunday, Dan, Liz and Drake came to the marina at lunch time. The males went to the pool. Another cruising family was also at the pool, with kids who were 9 and 11. The four kids had a blast and played all afternoon and into the evening. 

One of the tricks Christi and Eric learned while circumnavigating is that cooking can be difficult at times, so we need plenty of frozen foods onboard that can be easily re-heated. We’d eaten quite a bit of our frozen food stockpile on the passage, in Bahia Falsa and in Bahia Candeleros, so Christi spent the afternoon cooking in order to re-stock the freezer supply. Liz kept her company. 

First thing Monday morning, Eric started on the battery charger project. Eric had located and read the manual, and had psyched himself up for a major repair project. He was delighted to find that it was just a breaker that needed to be re-set. Christi spent most of Monday cooking and doing chores. The boat kids came over and played in the afternoon. In the evening, we had dinner at the marina restaurant with the boating family and our neighbor on the Nordhavn 40.

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Bahia Candeleros to Puerto Escondido

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Q: How far north are you planning to go?

A: We doubt we’ll go farther north than Bahia de Los Angeles, but we have no firm plans.

Q: Have you fished? Is the sea warm?

A: We have not fished as of yet. The sea is about 84 degrees Fahrenheit. 

On Thursday, Eric ran the generator first thing in the morning, as he normally does. But this time, the batteries weren’t charging. Eric spent some time trouble-shooting the problem. We decided that we should head to the nearest marina, where it would be easier to diagnose and fix the problem. The batteries were still charging from the wind generator and the solar panels, and we have a small back up battery charger that was working, so this wasn’t an urgent issue for us. But charging the batteries with the full-size battery charger certainly makes life easier. 

We contacted the marina at Puerto Escondido, only 6 nm away, and made a reservation for Friday. We spent the rest of the day doing chores. In the afternoon, Eric got out the SNUBA gear so Christi could tackle her most arduous chore: cleaning the bottom.

It was particularly rocky in the water that day, so swimming took a lot of effort. She pooped out pretty fast. Eric used the SNUBA to make sure all was fine under the waterline, then he used it to adjust the flopper stopper. Eric and Keith played in the water for a while before we called it a day. 

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Bahia Falsa to La Paz

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On Thursday afternoon, we’d attempted to go to La Paz via the road. Unfortunately, the logistics hadn’t worked out.  

Here are a couple sunrise photos from Friday:

Still wanting to go to La Paz, we started Friday morning off by planning the logistics to take Kosmos. Once we realized that conditions would be more favorable to travel in the early afternoon, we went back to the shallow nook and frolicked in the water some more. Oddly enough, there were less fish and birds than yesterday.

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February 2019 Update on Us

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Our big news is that we have moved back to San Diego! The San Francisco Bay Area was nice, and we did enjoy the boating up there, but we are deeply rooted in San Diego. Eric has returned to work at DivX, and he is excited by the new opportunities there. Keith is back at his former French language immersion school. We have mostly fallen back into our old routine. That includes helping our two remaining parents, who are both in their late 80s, very frail, and need a lot of help.

We returned in early January, when weather windows along the coast are few and far between. We lucked out and got an amazing weather window from San Francisco to San Diego in between two big weather systems. The window lasted three days, and we managed to get back into San Diego in (relatively) blazing fast 70 hours. Here is a photo of sea conditions:

Last year, we did a lot of work to Kosmos. We changed out both refrigerators and the washer/dryer, resealed the main engine keel cooler, installed a new wind sensor and display, installed a new inverter, got new bottom paint, and put Prop Speed on the keel coolers.

We’re hoping that life slows down for us soon so that we can find time to fix the technical issues with the blog site, as well as write posts about the work we’ve done to Kosmos and the places we’ve explored, both via boat and via land travel. Meanwhile, here is a pic from Angel Island, a small island park in the middle of the Bay: