In the morning Captain worked on the water pump for the yanmar engine. He found that while the impeller was intact, the brass seal that spins around against a plate had broken off its assembly, and was allowing air to get in, and thus the engine heats up. At low rpms...as in motor sailing, it just can’t keep a good seal...so our theory that the exhaust isn’t exiting while motorsailing is debunked. It is purely a matter of needed higher revs to keep the pieces together. It’s nice to know what the problem is, and we hope to fix it in Cape Town. That’s problem number one sorted...number two was the loss of the electronics, that was sorted by a quick thinking gentleman by the name of Johann, who in five minutes flat, found the blown fuse and replaced it! Now that’s done! Problem number three was the Genoa crew chewed almost through, the sailmaker, Laurent, came yesterday and picked it up to repair it! This is such a good place to get things done on a boat! In the afternoon we celebrated our joy in things coming together by purchasing a bottle of local rum, and walking through town to the racetrack. Here we watched the first two races with some local youths, then we explored the vip area, and watched two races from the roof, and finally, we went down to the track and watched the loading into the chute, and the start. All very exciting! The Champ de Mars is the second oldest racetrack in the world! Pretty cool, and just a really fun way to interact with the local people, eat local street food, and have a good time.
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