continued… Not far from the otter area was an area on the prehistoric animals of Florida, which included megalodon sharks (more on megaladons).
Florida also had mammoths. The mammoths didn’t go extinct until 10,000 years ago, so they lived alongside man in Florida.
Dawn on Thursday, April 9, 2026
It was windy and the wind created big waves out in the ocean. In the early morning, Eric drove over to the beach to watch the big waves. It also rained on and off all day – sometimes it rained hard for a few minutes and stopped, sometimes there were a few big scattered drops now and then, sometimes just drizzle. The humidity made the air temperature hot, but the wind was cold, so it made the temperature fluctuate in a weird way.
A Yacht Tech employee came out this morning and worked on the water maker. He changed the oil and salinity sensor. Eric had been unable to change the sensor himself because of the odd wrench size. The technician had actually made his own specialty wrench by altering another wrench. Having the right tool for the job did the trick. This was another project that Eric hated to pay someone else to do, but he knew that he would risk hurting his back again if he tried to do it himself.
In the early afternoon, Christi and Keith headed down to Ft. Lauderdale to see Tiki Tour. They were still in Ft. Lauderdale, but had moved locations. This time, the drive was uneventful, but the Maps app routed us through the airport, which was weird. Christi and Keith picked up Fynn and the three of them went to the Museum of Discovery and Science in downtown Ft. Lauderdale.
Thursday, April 2 — It rained hard all morning, but the forecast said it was supposed to stop in the afternoon. By the time Christi and Keith finished school, the rain had mostly stopped. Believing it was going to be clear for the rest of the afternoon, Keith and Christi hopped in the car and drove down to Ft. Lauderdale, which was about an hour drive south, to see Tiki Tour.
Shortly after getting on the freeway, a cloud rolled over that dropped rain so hard that there was no visibility. Maps re-routed us off the freeway, so we figured there must have been an accident ahead. The detour took us a couple of miles south before routing us back onto the freeway. The street route had many traffic lights, and it took a solid half-hour to drive those two miles. By the time we were back on the freeway, the rain had stopped and the freeway was clear.
Tiki Tour was anchored in the ICW near a bridge. Unfortunately, Christi was confused about which bridge and went to a spot about a mile away. After a bit of texting back and forth with Tiki about not seeing their boat, Tiki figured out we were in the wrong place. All in all, by the time we finally arrived at the correct bridge, the one hour drive had turned into a two hour drive.
While there had been heavy rain North Palm Beach, it hadn’t really rained in Ft. Lauderdale this morning, and no rain was in the forecast for the afternoon. Christi, Diane, Keith and Fynn went to the Hugh Taylor Beach State Park, located on the barrier island between the ICW and the beach. The entrance fee was $6 per vehicle or $2 per person if entering by foot, so it was actually cheaper for the four of us to take the car in than it would have been to walk in.
Per the map/brochure they gave us, the road did a one-way loop around the 180-acre park, with parking lots interspersed along the loop. We found a parking spot and began to explore on foot. Per the blurb on the brochure, the Tequesta Indians utilized this land during their annual migrations, but generally moved on quickly. The first permanent settlement in Ft. Lauderdale was the fort, which was built for the Second Seminole War, and was located about 2-miles south of the park. It sounded like Hugh Taylor Birch was one the earliest non-military residents in the area. In 1893, he started purchasing land in what is now part of the city of Ft. Lauderdale. Upon his death in 1943, he donated this piece of land to the city to be used to preserve a natural, wild area for the protection of wildlife. It was a surreal little rural oasis in the middle of the dense and bustling city.
The diversity of the park was surprising. On the south side was the ICW, with a sea wall and dock that offered great views of the nearby expensive waterfront homes.
There were quite a few walking trails. This one paralleled the road.
And several trails went through the center. Most of the trails we walked were quite different from one another.
Continue readingThe 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.
Continue readingThe moon was not full anymore, but still shone vividly at dawn on Thursday, March 5
We’d arranged to meet two of the families at Thunderball Grotto at 0900, which was slack high tide. We were leery about getting in and out of the cave at high tide, but they assured us that it would not be a problem and said they thought it was better to go when there was no current.
We left Kosmos at 8:40, figuring it would take us 20-minutes to get there. But even though it was supposed to be nearly slack tide, the current was strong and our little 3 hp electric motor struggled. For a portion of the time, we were only going a little over one knot. It took 40-minutes to get there. Eric was frustrated. He’s been contemplating switching to a fast gas motor for the last few months, and he announced that this was the last straw – he was buying a new motor. When we got to the cave, we could barely see the entrance. We don’t think we would have been able to find it at all had we not been there before.
As our friends had assured us, getting in was not difficult. Here was a selfie with a view of the entrance from the inside.
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