Solar eclipse

Wow, our second solar eclipse this year - stunning, and I hadn't even heard about it until I walked out of the supermarket thinking it was so overcast, an eerie darkness, it looked as though a huge storm was upon us.  Then I saw that everyone was looking up at the sky.  I ran back to the boat to dig our my trusty mammogram x-Ray's which gave us a spectacular viewing - another great sighting through the boobs!

It looks as though tomorrow is finally the day we'll be hauled out so that we can fix our 'emergency' leak.  Thank goodness Paul was able to stem the flow or else we would have been in serious trouble while the yard gave us one delay after the other.

We've also just received the news that our sail has arrived so hopefully we can get that out of customs this weekend.  The furler foils had been sitting at the airport in Cape Town for a week with no hope of getting anywhere.  The agent here was using another agent there and that one didn't really seem to know how to jump through the export hoops.  In the end, we asked the supplier to get the package back and take it to the sailmaker to have included in their shipment.  They were all very obliging which allowed it all to get under way immediately.  Our old cruising friend, Bronte, was also an absolute star  by getting us the necessary ropes (sheets and in-haul lines) in Cape Town and taking them over to the sailmaker for inclusion.  Thanks so much Bronts, we owe you.

With any luck (please, it's our time for a little luck), we will be back in the water on Monday, then tie up against a nearby wall so that the rigger can assemble the forestay and furler there before connecting it all back to the mast and deck.  If that all runs smoothly, we could actually hoist the new sail and leave Port Louis to scout around a couple of other anchorages before leaving for Madagascar.  Yeah.