June 25, 2001

Cosmos

N 25^o23', W 80^o06'

Cosmos and crew have departed Ft. Lauderdale and are headed for Key West. We might stop in Key West for fuel. We left Ft. Lauderdale in a T Storm and then the wind went calm. We are motoring.

We decided to go outside the Florida Reef so that we could more easily travel at night without worrying about hitting buoys, coral and keys. We seem to avoid the Gulf Stream as long as we stay within about a couple of miles of the reef. We now have the GPS interfaced to the autopilot. This means that we can put the latitude and longitude of a waypoint into the GPS and then command the autopilot to go to that point with no further action from the helm except to keep watch and maintain safe passage of other boats. This takes a major load off of the helmsman/watch keeper, which is especially appreciated at night. I estimate that we added about 3 to 4 thousand pounds to the weight of Cosmos with new equipment, gear and provisions. That is about equivalent to the average American car that probably weighs about 3,000 pounds! Our main fuel and water tanks are full, and we added 72 gallons of diesel capacity to our standard 100 gallons, 15 gallons of emergency water and 20 gallons of gas capacity for the dinghy outboard.

Cosmos is handling the extra weight very well. The chef had great ideas for a meal last night until he spent 5 minutes in the galley. Then he had to come up for fresh air and dinner became ravioli from cans. We just fired up the water maker and it pretty quickly popped a hose off of the desalination filter. Getting the compression fittings properly snugged is tricky because the fittings are made for metal hose and the hose is high pressure plastic. We happen to have the expert on board for making such things work. I expect it will work fine. Today we hope to fix a few more things that the contractors broke. Last night the running lights were out of service until I found a disconnected wire. Two items that still do not work are the wind speed indicator and the solar panel voltage regulator is giving an error.