Stormy Weather and Boat Work in North Palm Beach, Florida, USA

Wednesday, April 8 — The last few days have been low-key, mostly spent onboard.

On Monday, a Yacht Tech worker knocked on our door first thing in the morning, while Keith and Christi were doing school. Eric had no idea which projects they were going to do in which order, so while he’d already prepped the boat as much as he could, he couldn’t get completely ready without knowing the order. The worker said he was there to change the group 31 battery in lazarette that started generator and wing engine. Eric had to quickly empty out the laz so he could access the batteries.

Eric generally tried to do as much work on Kosmos as he could, and it was kind of hard for him to pay someone to do this task because it was something he could have done himself. However, doing so involved awkward twisting in a tight space, and he didn’t want to risk hurting himself again

While the technician was working in the lazarette, Eric removed the sight gauges on the two 60-gallon water saddle tanks. He’d thought it would be a terrible job involving moving both fridges, but on Friday, the supervisor who’d come out had said it would be easy, so Eric did it himself. It was indeed easy. Once he had undone the screws, we held buckets under the screw holes so the water could drain out. It dripped for a long time after we thought the tanks were already empty. After a few minutes, we had Keith run from port to starboard and back again for a few minutes to rock the boat and help drain the excess water. 

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Snorkeling in Warderick Wells Cay and Moving to Sampson Cay, The Exuma Islands, The Bahamas — And Thoughts on Refrigerator/Freezers

Friday, March 20, continued... In the afternoon, the kids from Tiki and Zimovia came over to play a game called Munchkin. After a while, they moved to Zimovia, which had a bigger table and better seating than Kosmos.

After they left, Eric, Christi and Clean Cup went snorkeling with another family in the anchorage called Sail La Vie. Christi and Eric had briefly met Sail La Vie one of the times we were in Big Major and they seemed like a nice family. We invited Clean Cup to join us since the Clean Cup kids were close in age to the Sail La Vie kids.

The motor had dried out and seemed to be working fine now, so Eric and Christi took their own dinghy — but warned the other two families that a motor failure was possible and to be prepared to rescue them. They left very early just in case there was an emergency. The motor seemed to work fine, which was a relief. Since they were so early, they waited on the sandbar in the middle of The Horseshoe for the other two families to arrive.

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Rocky Point to Blackpoint, Exuma Islands, The Bahamas

Dawn on Saturday, February 28

It was still calm in the morning. We’d never put out the flopper stoppers, put on the window covers or got the dinghy down, so we had very little to do to get ready to go this morning. We pulled up anchor about 0630. It was a smooth passage to Blackpoint. We had a current with us and made amazing time, arriving at 1245.  

Our friends on Algonquin and a Nordhavn 50 called Grey Goose were in the anchorage. Keith and Eric met them onshore. Christi stayed aboard to attend an online meeting.

They went to Lorraine’s on the road for lunch. Lorraine’s directed them to go to High Tide (the Lorraine’s on the waterfront) instead. After 30-minutes, the server still hadn’t taken their drink orders yet, so they left and went next door to the Yacht Club, instead. Eric had a nice time talking Nordhavns, but Keith was bored. After lunch, they headed back to Kosmos. Eric and Keith did stop by Lorraine’s mom’s for bread on both the way in and the way out, but she wasn’t home either time.

We’ll take a moment to share our opinions: we think the three restaurants in Blackpoint are all very comparable in terms of price, menu selection and quality of food. That said, we’ve decided that the Yacht Club was the overall best restaurant. We thought Lorraine’s had the best food, in part because she cooked the food to order, but the service was the slowest of the three, in part because she cooked food to order. Deshamon’s and Lorraine’s were inconsistent with hours. Emerald Sunset had stable hours and good service, but it was also the most expensive and the food was mediocre. The Yacht Club was reliable, with consistent hours, food, service and middle of the road prices. The biggest downside of the Yacht Club was that cats lived on the premises and sometimes the cat smell was quite strong — and for Christi, that was a big negative.

Christi hadn’t been on dry land since Wednesday and was anxious to go to shore. She and Eric headed to shore as soon as her meeting ended. Here were some of the birds watching them as they approached the dock.

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Lying Low in Hog Cay, Ragged Islands, The Bahamas

Dawn on Wednesday, February 18

It was another day of puttering around the boat. Before doing school, Eric and Keith changed the generator oil and cleaned the sea strainer for the generator. Eric also ran the wing engine. Then Keith and Christi did school. In the afternoon, Keith went tubing with Clean Cup while Eric and Christi went to shore. There were a couple of locals there who were making repairs to the hut, but they left shortly after the group arrived.

When they were done tubing, they joined everyone onshore. Here was another shot of Kosmos with both flopper stoppers out. You can see why we called them “the force field.” No one wanted to anchor too close to us when we had them out!

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