July 26th at 5 am we left the dock of Bocas Marina to head back to the San Blas. We opened the engine compartment to watch our new baby purr and hoped that nothing went wrong. Forty-five minutes later there was smoke everywhere inside and water leaking from the vented loop I installed. I decided we should go back to Bocas and figure this out, so we turned around. At 7 am we were anchored and I started to work on the problem. My new exhaust elbow extension was wrapped with a old very thin wrap and was smoking. I hoped that was it because if it wasn't then the exhaust was leaking. After removing the cloth I took some extra manifold wrap I had from installing the diesel fired boat heater. This material is thick and has clips so you can use wire to tie it tight around the pipe. Then we tightened a few hose clamps and at 7:30 am we started out with round two. One hour later we had no smoke and no leaks. I wish I could tell you we ran it for hours and had no problems but the wind was blowing so we sailed 23 of the 27 hours after we departed for the second time. Kokomo's new engine only has 5.4 hours on her. We pulled into Portobelo and anchored around 9 am for some rest and will leave for the San Blas in the early morning. Tomorrow we have about 10 hours before we will be in the San Blas and I think we will finish the 10 hour break-in period. Then the next 40 hours can be done at a slower pace time wise.

For you sailors out there, we had wind at 18-23 knots, seas 5-7 feet, speed 6-8 knots, for a 24 hour run of 147 miles. Not bad for sailing as close to the wind as we could the whole time..

Life is good on Kokomo!

Denny