Dawn on Friday, May 1
Today was the 17th anniversary of the completion of circumnavigation. But it was a busy day, so we didn’t have much of a chance to reflect. Kosmos was supposed to be put back in the water today, so the first thing we did upon waking up was to pack up our stuff and check out of the hotel. We went to the boat and dropped off our stuff. We saw that the painting work was completed, but they hadn’t removed the plastic yet (more on the painting below).
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.
Dawn on Friday, April 10, 2026
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.
Continue readingcontinued… 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.
