Fort Lauderdale – 9 kilometres walked
We watched Waddington sail away as Ben and Kate embarked on the next leg of their journey. We hoped to next see them in the Bahamas in the coming weeks, but where that would be, nobody knew.
During the night one of our catamaran neighbours broke loose of their mooring ball and were slammed by the wind into the sea wall, so we took and extra line and ran it through the lower ring on ours as a safety in case the pendant was equally weak as our neighbour’s. Somebody hasn’t been maintaining their balls very well.
After breakfast we realized one of the fridges had stopped working. We discovered a melted fuse in the electrical panel so today was going to be the day to finally fix it once and for all. I’d been procrastinating on this job for lack of appropriate wire – I should have done it weeks ago but I guess we’ve been having too much fun.
The walk to a commercial area we haven’t been to yet was long and hot but worthwhile as we passed many interesting places – a house yard full of huge iguanas sunning themselves, some cool trees, a massive bridge over the Port Everglades port with four island-sized cruise ships loading passengers. After a short bagel and fluid stop at Einstein Brothers Bagels we walked a short distance and found the motherlode – a power centre with a T.J. Maxx, Total Wine, and an Ace Hardware.
While Ana shopped the Maxx, Tony and I went to Ace. The nice lady at the checkout asked me to put my backpack in a holding area. Tony told her our chihuahua was in there and to feed it some treats if she heard any noise coming from the bag. I got twenty feet of their finest 14 guage stranded wire then we moved onto Total Wine. This is the ultimate booze store. They stock every beer, wine, and spirits currently available in the world. On our first pass I couldn’t find anything I liked, but eventually settled on a 1.75 litre of caramel-tinged Sailor Jerry spiced rum and a Malibu rum for Ana. Oh, they have cigars too so Tony grabbed a couple of those. A nice lady pulled us over and asked if we’d like to taste some Scotch. We sure did, so we enjoyed a small sampler then stood there staring at her for a minute or two, eyes darting from hers, to the cart of scotch, then back to her, waiting for the next one. She awkwardly waved goodbye and slunk out of there.
Ana found us just as we were walking into the Maxx, saving us a painful trip into the scary recesses of the retailer and we walked back to the bus stop, hopped on, and sat across from two schizophrenic passengers deep in conversation with people who weren’t there. We also recognized a girl that sat beside us on a previous bus trip so we were rapidly becoming Lauderdale locals.
Back at SeaLight, we fixed the fridge while Ana fixed us an incredible quesadilla lunch/dinner, then we all sealed up hatch and window leaks as the heavens opened and torrential Floridian rain pounded the boat – the first real rainfall we have seen since the end of September. We huddled in SeaLight’s cabin, ate a long and slow dinner, drank a bunch of beer and wine, then surrendered to the evening and went to our respective cabins before the stroke of Mariner’s Midnight.
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