Category Archives: Cruising Life

Describes an experience regarding the boating lifestyle of our travel.

Another Trip to San Diego

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Yesterday Christi gave Kosmos a really good scrub down. Then she scrubbed all the canvas window covers, which was a long overdue project. The canvas covers were gleaming white when they were new, but somewhere along the way they turned brown. After vigorous scrubbing, they are now a nice shade of off white. Then she cleaned all the windows inside and out. Finally, she resumed the metal polishing project, tackling the stubborn rust stains that wouldn’t come off before, but she only got about ½ way done before she decided she had done enough work for one day.

Eric, meanwhile, got the boat ready to be left for a few weeks, which entails a very long check list of things. We are heading back to San Diego yet again. No need to panic, this time there is no emergency. Eric is has a project at work that has to be done in person instead of remotely, so his work is flying us home so he can do this project. We are not very excited about yet another deviation from our boat journey, especially so soon, but it will be nice to wrap up some more loose ends with life at home that we didn’t get to last time, and also nice to see family and friends. BTW, Eric’s mom has responded incredibly well to the chemo and continues to steadily improve. She is also suffering surprisingly few side effects to the chemo compared to Christi’s mom.

This morning we were up at 0330 to Continue reading →

Food and More Food in Greece

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Our flight back to Crete was at 0530, which meant we were up at 0245 and out the door by 0330. We were surprised that the bus to the airport was full. Early morning flights must be common. Flying with a sinus infection is not fun. We were back to Kosmos by 0800. Christi self-medicated and went to bed. It has been 4 days now, and except for occasionally rousing for food and restroom, she has stayed in bed pretty much the entire time.

While Christi slept, Eric worked on a few chores around the boat, including fixing some chips in the gel coat, more cleaning in the engine room, trying again to hunt down the exact spot of the starboard stabilizer leak (it is somewhere near, or at, the locking pin or the cylinder), and the never ending task of organizing. A Nordhavn 57 pulled into the marina the day we got back from Athens. It is always fun to find a fellow Nordhavn on our travels. Eric spent some time chatting with the owner and helping him with some boat maintenance and repair issues. But Eric spent the vast majority of his time on the most important task of all: complete the quest in his video game, Oblivion. He is pleased to report he finished his game and saved the world.

We figure now is a good time to get caught up on our food reporting. We tried a dish called seafood saganaki. We were expecting the battered, pan fried cheese topped with seafood. We were very surprised when out came something akin to a stew with a rich tomato sauce. It was really good.

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Another staple of Greece is souvlaki, which the rest of the world calls kebabs. Pictured here is a souvlaki sandwich, on pita bread, topped with tomato, onion and French fries.

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We tried a dish that consisted of Continue reading →

TLC for Kosmos and Lots of Greek Foods

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After a leisurely breakfast and some more time spent looking at photos, we said our goodbyes and drove back to Agios Nikolaos. We made a stop for lunch, and were back at the boat by 1400 (2:00 pm)

It was finally time to pay attention to our poor, neglected boat. Between the beating she took in all the rough seas over the last few months, the constant hard running, the extra salty Red Sea, and the combination of extreme dust and no rain throughout the Middle East, Kosmos was in desperate need of some TLC in every single area. This is the ideal place to do it. Right now, the climate is temperate, making it easy to work outside and in the engine room (no, no air conditioning in the engine room. Actually, it gets hotter in the engine room when the air conditioning is on due to the generator). Bugs also aren’t much of a problem. The boat is securely tied and the water in the marina is flat, so we can do all the things you can’t do when it is rolly. There is a sufficiently stocked boat store literally at the edge of the marina, so it is easy to run and get that one little thing you need to finish a job. There is internet here, so we can look up on-line resources to help make the job easier. There is an oil drop off station here in the marina. We have our own hose connection with great water pressure. There is staff around to offer you pointers in the right direction for help and supplies. It just doesn’t get much better than where we are right now.

Once we got back, we Continue reading →

Welcome to Bali, Crete, Greece

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We were in bed early and slept soundly. We are always so darn tired after a passage. When we did finally get up, we got right to work scrubbing down the exterior of the boat. The salt was really caked on and we had a hard time getting it off. It took some serious scrubbing. We now have a renewed appreciation for the South Pacific, where it usually rained hard for an hour every day, washing away all the salt and dirt. We rarely washed the boat there — nature kept it clean for us. And when we did wash it, very little scrubbing was needed. We miss that.

When we were finally done, we got Kosmos situated so we could be gone a couple of days and we headed to Bali (not to be confused with Bali, Indonesia) along the main highway. The drive is beautiful. About a third of the road is inland, the other two thirds along the water. The highway is well maintained, with good signs. Crete is mountainous, with very little flat land anywhere that we could see. The road winds up and down the mountains, so you get incredible vistas from mountain peaks and close ups of the foliage in the troughs.

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The vast majority of cars on the road are Continue reading →

Passage from Port Said, Egypt to Crete, Greece

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Day 1

It felt good to be moving on the sea. By morning, the wave speed had slowed down. There was little wind chop, and it was an overall pleasant ride. Wind has varied from 8 knots to 16 knots. What makes it an even nicer ride is that we are running at a normal RPM and speed for a change. Kosmos is happier running in her sweet spot than she is running flat out, the ride is smoother for us, and fuel consumption is much, much better.

We crossed near the 31N by 31E line, which we thought was an interesting numerical moment. We had a beautiful sunset, with the sun especially red.

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It is much cooler here. We actually have to shut the windows at night and wear blankets when we sleep. We almost forgot what that was like aboard, since we have been so used to the heat of the tropics and desert.

There has been a ton of traffic on the radio ever since we left Egypt, mostly from warships calling every vessel that pops up on their radar. So far we have heard ships from Canada, NATO, and Israel. We have never heard so many military groups in one place before. The war ships will Continue reading →