Weather update – the wind regularly gusted to 30kts in the marina last night, making for a bouncy night and continues to prevent us from leaving. Our most reliable forecaster says these strong winds will finally subside by Sunday evening. 

We still are finding Bimini interesting. Everyday we get a little bit better idea of what it must be like to live here. Wikipedia states that the population as of the 2010 census was under 2000 people. This sounds pretty small, until we looked up Chub Cay, our next destination. Population: 48.

This morning Paula took some of her warmer weight clothes and went into the Mystery Compartment  to exchange them for some additional summer weight clothes. The Mystery Compartment is a deep storage compartment forward and deep under the bed, so named because we had the boat several years before we discovered it. She discovered that the “landlubber” clothes storage bag, brought from the apartment and made of plastic and canvas had not tolerated the condensation and dampness of winter well. Only the bag itself had actual mold on it, but the clothes smelled of it a bit. So, more laundry and a new plastic container remedied the problem.

Once chores were done, we ate a quick lunch and got ready to do more exploring. We went back to the beach, but this time a quiet, solitary section. A big change from the busy Radio Beach we visited yesterday.

We tried to visit the Dolphin House museum, a famous house-building project in progress on Bimini by a man named Ashley Saunders, who has a fascination for dolphins. The sign outside and the hours posted on the internet proclaimed that it should be open, but it wasn’t. A man passing by let us know that Mr. Saunders was “off island” today, maybe back tomorrow. We still were able to explore the outside of the Museum (today’s featured picture) and climb the outside stairs to see the parts finished and those still under construction.

As we were walking around the streets of Bimini again today, it continues to amaze us how many cars there are on the island. Since we been here we’ve now walked completely from one end of the island to the other including all the paved roads in between. It’s a little over 2 miles from the southern most terminus of the main road until it ends at the northern end. There are no traffic lights, stop signs or speed limit signs. In fact, there are no signs at all. It takes about 4 minutes to drive the length of the island. Nevertheless, it seems like every household has a car. In addition, most of the tourists rent the numerous golf carts on the island and there seem to be just as many of them on the street as cars. The streets are only wide enough for one large car so oncoming traffic has to pull over while the other car goes by. The golf carts are small enough to whiz past each other without stopping. The maximum time it takes to get from where anyone lives to any place of business would be about 2 minutes. Yes, they do have one cop car.

Yesterday Paula found out where to go to buy fresh fish, only to learn when we went there today that there was no fresh fish, because the wind was too strong for the fishing boats to go out. BUT, they had fresh whole conch, so that’s what we bought! The fishmonger had been chopping some conch to make conch salad, which he also sells. Paula noticed he had a lit can of Sterno on the cutting board right in the middle of the pile of food he was chopping. The can was too small to be heating any of the food, so she asked him about it. Apparently, the heat it radiates keeps the flies away from the cutting board while he works. Very ingenious! We also found a grocery store on the way home that had produce and cans of evaporated milk (for a recipe). We bought limes, home-grown carrots, plantains and a cucumber. At yet another small store we bought “Nate’s Famous Combo Bimini Bread”. It was like banana bread on steroids, with coconut, guava, dates, and banana in it. The half-loaf we bought had the weight and heft of a small brick.

Back at the boat we stowed the refrigerator items and went to the marina pool. Very relaxing. So relaxing that Paula decided to tackle the whole conch tomorrow, and thawed some tuna filets from Sam’s instead which we had blackened in a pan, along with canned squash, spinach, and cheese casserole. The Bimini bread was a great dessert, moist, dense, and delicious.