Last Two Layover Days in West End

--Blogpost written by Bob

This blogpost covers our third and fourth (unplanned) layover days in West End.

Third Layover Day in West End

Our third layover day in West End was Friday, December 22.  We left early for the FedEx office in Freeport, hoping to get our transmission control cable that was shipped from Vero Beach yesterday.  Despite our frequent stops at the FedEx office, our package finally arrived at 12:30 PM.  With our control cable in hand we felt free to enjoy some of the sights in Freeport since we had a rental car for the remainder of the day.

We went to Bernie's Tiki Bar for lunch and had delicious grilled lobster tails.  (We broke our rule about only eating out one time per day today.)

This was the view from our seats at Bernie's Tiki Bar.

From Bernie's, we found our way to a nearby straw market but it became clear that it was a popular stop for cruise ship passengers and was disappointing.

We then drove to Solomon's Super Market to get provisions for the next 4 or 5 days.  Solomon's is a big grocery store much like you would find in the U.S.  We were even able to get a turkey breast for our Christmas dinner on board.

Freeport is quite nice with some nice homes, shops, and restaurants.  The area between Freeport and West End, however, is economically depressed with about every other building boarded up (either hurricane damage or never finished building)--this includes churches.

We turned in our rental car at the marina after unloading our groceries.

Fourth Layover Day in West End

Our fourth and last layover day was Saturday, December 23, two days before Christmas..  We tackled the transmission control cable replacement first thing in the morning.  Things were going smoothly until I dropped one of the clevis pins that connect the control cable to the levers by the wheel--it fell into the pedestal cavity and we weren't able to recover it.  This is one of the only things for which I have no spare.

The new transmission cable has a braided
core as opposed to a solid wire core.

We used a stainless steel bolt and a nylon-inserted nut to replace the clevis pin.  This turned into another fiasco but we resolved it by adjusting the engine end of the cable.  We finished the job in 3 hours--1 hour faster than we did it in Vero Beach.

Incidentally. the solid wire core of the previous transmission cable failed right at the area where it is clamped to the transmission.  It looks likes it failed due to vibration.  The previous cable failed at a point where the cable makes a bend just below one of the drawers by the companionway.  In any event, the new cable with a braided core should not fail anytime soon, hopefully.

We spent the remainder of the afternoon cleaning out our solids container from our composting toilet (dirty job!), cleaning the decks, vacuuming the boat's interior, and filling our water tanks.  So, we are ready to leave tomorrow morning!  We want to top off our diesel tanks before leaving the marina.

From here, we will be traveling to Great Sale Cay, then Powell Cay, and then onto Marsh Harbour where we will spend the weekend prior to New Year's Day.


Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and thanks for following our blog!