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Bimini has been wonderful, but it’s time for us to move on!  We’ve got a good weather window that will allow us to make it to the Berry Islands within two days travel, so we’ll be pulling hook shortly and moving along.  That said, I am yet once again laggard in my updates.
The day we arrived in Bimini, we finally got a chance to play with the Brownie - we loaded it into the dingy and took it over to the beach adjacent to our anchorage, and set the system up then did a little walk off of the beach into 15′ water where we played around with the system and worked out what our weighting should be with this equipment. After an overnight trip and a good long swim, which felt wonderful, we were pretty tuckered out, so we made a quick dinner and turned in early for the night.
The next morning we awoke to find that the other boat that had been sharing the anchorage with us had departed in the wee hours so we were solo in this pretty anchorage next to the new Bimini Bay Resort.  We decided we’d do a little exploration of the island after lunch, so we putted over to one of the beaches and beached the Portabote then ambled along Bimini’s lone main street and into Alice Town… not much to see but there had been a wedding that day, and the happy couple and their entourage passed us about 4 times driving up and down the street, balloons tied to their car, and honking to the whole town who applauded every time they passed.  When we returned to our dinghy, we found that another boat had joined us - and we putted by and “gave a knock on the hull” to say hello.  Turned out to be a really great couple, Michael and Kate, who are a little younger than we are, but are on the same kind of journey as us, engaged and making the most of a layoff (from advertising as well!) they decided to travel on their boat for about six months.  They invited us aboard for a drink, which turned into an evening of hanging out and having a great time and dinner together.  We all retired for the night on the later side, with the thought that we’d regroup in the morning and perhaps do some exploration/snorkeling on the sand bar across the channel from our anchorage.
We spent the next couple of days relaxing and enjoying the great weather- snorkelling for conch, and hanging out. Turns out that I am good at spotting Conch when snorkelling - and although we didn’t kill any of them there was one point where I’d gathered up 5 large conch!  We saw spiny black sea urchins, HUGE red starfish, lots of little Spanish Grunts and sea anemones - very cool! Kate and Mike had had a conch salad at Joe’s Conch shack, and were raving about it, and determined to make some - but we ultimately decided that the best approach was to buy the prepped conch from Joe, and then prepare the ceviche ourselves, rather than try to clean the conch’s ourselves, plus a northerly wind had cropped up, which made the temperature of the air much cooler than the water, so none of us was really up for a swim.  We hopped in our dinghies and decided to go for a little walk in town, over to the ocean side to check out the beach and the half sunken wreck that was lying agains the rocks on the shore.  Just as we reached the beach, we saw a really welcome sight - Rotop!!  We waved energeticlly to Martijn as he picked his way up the channel, and when he was close enough, we hollered that we’d meet him at the customs dock (a mere 5 minute walk back into town).  Brian, Mike and Kate stopped at the liquor store to pick up a Kalik for each of us, and one to welcome Martijn to town, and I continued over to the dock to meet up with him!  Once Martijn had cleared customs, we directed him to where we were anchored, and then trekked back to our dinghies and made our way back to the anchorage where Martijn had already gotten himself anchored and the trusty Kayak out.
We had a wonderful evening all hanging out together, and started to formulate a plan for the next leg of our journey… we debated departing yesterday, but the wind hadn’t fully swung around to the right direction for our trip, so we spent yesterday doing projects - finally replacing the broken slat - actually our whole companionway door from a piece of salvaged plexiglass, installing a few hand rails, and just generally making ready for today’s trip.  We all turned in early for a good night’s sleep before our early morning departure today - which has been somewhat delayed while we sorted out Mike’s dead batteries… now fixed, and our little armada is about to pull anchor and head off to the Berry Islands for the next few days.  I suspect that our posts will be somewhat delayed and erratic from here out, as the availability of an internet connection is questionable, but I’ll keep on keeping a log, and will make posts when connectivity permits!