The Birch Aquarium

Sunday, September 20 On Monday morning, Christi picked up some rubber o-rings for the watermaker fresh water filter housing. Eric changed out the rings out when he got home from work. Unfortunately, that didn’t do the trick in terms of stopping the leak, so more investigation is going to be needed to figure out the source of the leak. It looks like the filter might not be fitting just right.

We forgot to mention that a few weeks ago, Eric and his dad went to see Continue reading

Replacing the Starter Battery

Time seems to pass by in a quick sort of way these days. Here is a story from a little while ago…

Sunday, September 13 We had been procrastinating on putting in a new main engine starter battery largely because we were undecided about whether to replace it with the same size or a smaller one. On our last bay cruise, we noticed that the secondary alternator that charges the battery seemed to have inconsistent voltage drops. Hmmm”¦ was it the battery or the alternator causing the issue? We realized we couldn’t put off replacing the battery anymore. It was time to make a decision.

Our starter battery is a size Continue reading

Boating Tidbits and Q&A

Monday, August 24 — While we are not moving relative to our around the world pace, we are still using Kosmos. We start the engines every week. Also we have taken the boat out twice since Eric fixed the transmission cooler. The first time it took Christi literally all day to get the boat ready to go. Since it had been so long since we had moved Kosmos, just about every storage space aboard had to be re-packed and an almost overwhelming number of things needed to be stowed. But, the good news is she found some stuff she had lost weeks before!

On that first outing, we went out to Continue reading

Book Coming Soon!

Volume 1, of the yet untitled book covering San Diego to Australia will hopefully be ready to purchase soon. Many people have asked us why they should buy our book if they can read our blog for free. Here are a few good reasons:

  • Prologue: How we formed the dream and the early planning stages.
  • The entire 21 day passage from San Diego to Nuka Hiva has been re-written. At that point, the blog was in real time and we didn’t want people to worry about us. But the truth was that it was tough!
  • Many new stories from the journey – And there are some really good ones!
  • In Retrospect sections with great insights — so you can see the situation through the eyes of a newbie as we learn, while simultaneously seeing the same situation through the eyes of experience.
  • Streamlined stories – some complained our posts were too long and detailed, and the book is a condensed version they will enjoy more.
  • Formatting is first person, through Christi’s eyes – Some complained they didn’t like the third person format, so they will enjoy the book more.
  • Actual dates on each post. On the blog, the dates are not real time, which is a significant piece of information for anyone hoping to follow in our footsteps.
  • All profits will go to our cruising fund. The more books we sell, the sooner you can start reading about our next journey! So, buy one and get all your friends to buy one, too!

Fixing the O-Rings and More on Adjusting Back to Life in San Diego

Saturday, August 15 Two months has passed since our last post on adjusting to “regular” life. Emotionally speaking, Eric is now fully adjusted again, though it is a bit different than last time. In our old life, we had ridiculously busy schedules. Not only did we work a lot, we filled almost all of our non-work time with assorted activities. Most of our friends Continue reading