Visiting Friends on the West Coast of Florida

Sunday, June 15 — Our trip to San Diego was wonderful because we got to see many loved ones. It was a reminder of how blessed we were in terms of deeply rooted relationships. The crazy part was that, even though we saw loved ones every day, we still didn’t get to see everyone that we’d wanted to.

And we have loved ones in Florida, too. In addition to Johnny and Joanne, we have two sets of very long time, dear friends on the west coast. Today, we drove over to the west coast for an overnight trip to see them.

While Christi unpacked and re-packed, Eric finished preparing for the workers to come on Monday morning. He removed the electronics panel and steering wheel, and moved stuff out of spaces where they’d be working. 

We departed at 0915, taking the I-75, a toll-highway, across the state. it was dubbed Alligator Alley because alligators were known to wander out on the road, though we didn’t see any. In contrast to Southern California, Florida was flat, very green and had tons of ponds and waterways. With so much water around, it was no surprise that alligators flourished here.

We exited the highway in Bonita Springs and navigated to Scott’s house. Scott was a friend from college who we’ve stayed close with all these decades. We’ve been through so many of life’s ups and downs with Scott, and there are few people who know us better than he does. It was great to see him again! While we’d spoken on the phone with his girlfriend, Sheila, before we’d never met her in person, and it was lovely to get to know her.

Christi and Scott
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Replacing The Alternator Regulator

As you may recall, in Panama, we had a catastrophic failure of our ARCO Zeus alternator regulator. The summary was that there was a mandatory software update, and the update caused the unit to malfunction and over voltage our main 12-volt electrical system. This caused our battery manager, in an effort to protect the batteries, to disconnect 12v power from the boat. Without the 12v power we lost radar, charts, GPS, lights, and various other systems. We also had a fire suppression system that shut down the main engine because it thought the loss of power was due to fire. Ouch. Fortunately, the failure happened someplace where we were not in danger, but that was mostly luck. Had we been someplace else when the boat suddenly stopped operating, we likely would have crashed into something. We also had enough emergency and backup systems that we were able to quickly gain control of the boat (we literally had a back up propulsion engine, as well as three other batteries banks to power the boat).

To continue cruising, the temporary solution was running the generator to power the batteries instead of using the main engine alternator while underway.

The company who installed the upgraded battery system, including the alternator regulator, was Weber Marine. Even though we in no way blame Weber for the situation, they covered replacing the ARCO Zeus as part of their warranty on their work.

David from Weber Marine flew in on Sunday, June 8 so that he could start work on Monday morning. When we’d scheduled this trip, Kosmos was supposed to already be back in the water and thus the A/C working. Having to do this project on the hard with no A/C was painful. Also, the yard hours were limited, so Eric and David couldn’t come in early to work during the coolest part of the day.

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Recap of Kosmos’s Two Weeks in Seminole Boat Yard, Palm Beach Gardens, Floria, USA

Seminole Boatyard was responsible for hauling us out, pressure washing/scraping the bottom, and giving Kosmos a space to be worked on with power and water. For the actual work, we’d hired a company called Yacht Tech, who specializes in Nordhavns. Yesterday, when we’d said that Eric had met with “the staff,” we’d meant Yacht Tech.

The primary purpose for hauling out was to get new bottom paint. Usually, they’ll do spot sanding where needed and, wherever the paint is fine, will simply put another coat over the existing coats. But it was time to sand off all of the old paint and start fresh. The sanding took a couple of days. They waited to paint the bottom until the rest of the work on the hull had been completed, so the paint didn’t get done until the second week.

It was also time to balance the propellor. The propellor was removed and taken to a machine shop for balancing. One of the blades was off balance and had to be adjusted. It took four days before the propellor was put back on.

Propellor removed

We’d requested that Kosmos’s hull be compounded (old wax removed) and waxed. In yesterday’s post, we’d failed to mention that as soon as she was situated in her spot, they’d started working on the compounding/waxing along the waterline. We decided to go with compounding this time because, being out of the water, they had leverage that they simply cannot get when the boat is in the water (and normally the boat is in the water during waxing).

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Hauling Out in Seminole Boat Yard, Palm Beach Gardens, Florida USA

On Saturday, May 24, the three of us flew to San Diego. The flight was uneventful. We got a great shot of the Lake Worth Inlet and the southern portion of Lake Worth from the plane.

On Saturday, May 31, after an incredibly busy week, Eric flew back to Palm Beach so he could take Kosmos into the boat yard and oversee the work being done. Christi and Keith opted to stay in San Diego until Kosmos was back in the water. Here was twilight in Palm Beach.

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Keith’s Perspective on Palm Beach, Florida/Le point de vue de Keith sur Palm Beach, en Floride

This week has been fun. On Saturday we ate at a pizza restaurant called Nico’s, then we got Gelato. 

Cette semaine était amusante. Samedi nous avons mangé à une pizzeria qui s’appele Nico’s, puis on a mangé une glace. 

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