Wednesday, April 13 — Johnny and Joanne had recommended a breakfast/brunch restaurant in the same shopping center as Jeremiah’s called Berry Fresh Cafe. They had some unique menu items, both in terms of foods and beverages, that piqued our interest. The portions were huge and the food was fantastic. Keith ordered the Chorizo Crunch Wrap, which was a grilled tortilla stuffed with scrambled eggs, bacon, chorizo sausage, bacon, regular sausage, ham, cheddar and chipotle cream sauce. It was served with salsa on the side. Eric ordered the Nashville Chicken Biscuit, which had pimiento cheese, pickle slices, chicken tenders, poached eggs and hollandaise sauce served on a biscuit.
The sunrise on Sunday, April 12, 2026 was mostly blocked, but a sliver of sun managed to peep out from behind the clouds.
Saturday, Sunday and Monday were quiet days. We spent all three days doing chores around the boat in preparation for the haul out. We did lots of odds and ends, such as cooking up everything in the refrigerator that wouldn’t last for a couple of weeks and removing the storm plates from the windows. Last week, Eric had turned off the generator through-hull and opened up the generator so that the raw water pump could be changed. He got confirmation that it would be changed in the yard, so he put the generator back together and turned the through hull back to open on the off chance that it may need to be run. Someone came to pump out the blackwater tank. Eric and Keith also cleaned up rust stains that we’d noticed around the boat.
On Monday afternoon, we checked into a motel near the marina. It certainly wasn’t fancy, but it was the best deal in the area in terms of value for the money. Last year, this motel had been booked and Eric had been forced to stay farther away. He was happy about being closer this year.
In school, Keith was currently studying about the United States’s rapid expansion during the 1800s. As part of the expansion, Native American people living in desirable locations were forced off their land and moved to less desirable locations. The Seminole Indians of Florida resisted, so the US waged three wars against this tribe and their allies. Many of these allies were either free blacks or runaway slaves that the Seminoles had welcomed into their tribe. These black people were referred to as Black Seminoles.
It was fortuitous that we happened to be studying the Seminole Wars while we were so close to where they’d occurred. We wanted to take Keith to a museum about the Seminole history and we found one that looked interesting in a town called Clewiston, located on the south shore of Lake Okeechobee and about halfway between the east and west coasts of Florida. Since it was nearly an equidistant drive between North Palm Beach and where Special Blend lived on the west coast of Florida, we asked them if they’d be interested in meeting us. They said they would.
In the morning, Eric talked to Yacht Tech about the sight gauges – unfortunately, those particular gauges weren’t made anymore. They decided the best course of action was to recycle the old gauges by changing the valves and cleaning up the corrosion. At the end of the conversation, Yacht Tech confirmed that no one was scheduled to come out to Kosmos today, so Eric joined Christi and Keith.
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.
