Another intermittently rainy, blustery day. Good for baking! Paula made her first attempt at a risen loaf of Bimini Bread, a sweet bread made with grated coconut and coconut milk. This dough was much stickier than ones she’d done before  and that got her into trouble. In Maryland, she’d always draped a light, dampened towel onto the rising loaf to help maintain its warmth and humidity. However, this time the towel stuck to the sticky loaf and despite carefully peeling it away, the top “skin” of the loaf pulled away and the loaf “fell” or deflated. Cursing ensued.

Later when Paula was describing the disaster to Yuland, one of the marina managers, he shook his head, “Oh,” he said, “I never cover a rising sweet bread in the Bahamas. That is for cold climate baking. It is warm here!” You just never know who’s going to have an interest in bread-making! Better luck was had with the drop biscuits. Paula had been asked to make another batch today for the Sunday marina crew. This time she baked a larger batch and made sure Tommy got two.

Meanwhile Tommy did a complete systems maintenance check today. He ran the engine, ran the generator, ran the bow thruster, cleaned out the engine sea strainer, cleaned out the A/C sea strainer, cleaned out the watermaker sea strainer, and cleaned the watermaker pre-filter.

After baking (and washing what felt like every bowl, spoon, and pan we own) Paula used a brief break in the rain as an excuse to explore some of the undeveloped areas near the marina. There were many tiny lizards, so fleet and shy that she couldn’t photograph them, plus numerous non-aggressive bees and wasps and lots of flowers that she tried to identify via the internet. Some, like the tiny red dandelion-looking blooms, remain unidentified.  Others are recognizable from our time in St. Augustine, like Shepherd’s Needle, Morning Glory, Matchweed, and others. The birds are also  mostly familiar. Life is everywhere in this semi-tropical marine environment.  There are snappers, gar, rays, and dolphin in the marina waters. There are small coral visible below the piers. At low tide you can see mussels clinging to the junction of the natural limestone and the concrete of the dock structures (featured picture).

Then came a game of chess in which mistakes on both sides led to a rare check-mate for Paula.

Basing her meal prep on “what needs eating up” Paula served the color “brown” for dinner: Chicken in onion gravy, cabbage and bacon, and cooked apples with raisins.