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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Busy Day in the Exumas — Rachel’s Bubble Bath, Big Milestone Achieved, Dinghy Motor Failure, and Back to Big Major

The anchorage at dawn on Sunday, March 22

When we got up, we were pleased to see that the forecast had been correct — the wind had shifted so that anchoring at Rachel’s Bubble Bath would be comfortable today. As soon as we got up, we immediately started getting Kosmos ready to go to sea. We pulled up anchor at 0715, as the sun was rising. It took us about an hour and 20-minutes to get to the anchorage on Compass Cay that was next to Rachel’s Bubble Bath. We had to go through the narrow, shallow channel while the current was strong, which was stressful, but we followed our previous line and all went smoothly. We immediately got dinghy down and made breakfast. 

After breakfast, we met the crew from Tiki Tour on shore and trekked up the short saltwater river to the Bubble Bath.

Thanks to the recent big winds, the waves were huge. They were even coming over the left side of the big rock — in our previous visits, we’d only seen the waves come over the right side of the rock.

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