A dramatic arrival into Palau

About 65 miles from Palau and in the middle of the night ( things like this always happen in the middle of the night ) the engine alarm went off. Suzi quickly shut it down and then woke me from a deep sleep after about an hour of sleep. Trying to wake up was hard enough but trying to figure out what was wrong was even harder. I soon found that we had lost all our engine fresh water/anti freeze coolant but I couldn't find the leak. After an hour of removing this and that and shining the flashlight here and there I found it. A broken riser coming out of the block that was part of the fresh water loop back to the heat exchanger. So now I need to fix this while the boat is rocking this way and that, I'd put a tool down and when I went to reach for it again it was on the other side of the boat. The hardest part was finding enough spare parts to make a repair, any repair at this point since we weren't that far from the pass. I was able to scrape together an ensemble of fittings and hoses and completed a true "Mickey Mouse" repair just as we were approaching the pass through the surrounding reef of Palau. We had been on the radio with other cruisers we knew in the anchorage and they had arranged a tow for us, so instead of testing my less than perfect repair we decided to take the tow. I think the repair would of worked but if it didn't we would of been up on the reef in a heart beat as the wind was blowing pretty good and not always in the right direction. It wasn't a cheap morning as the tow cost us $650 but in the end we both felt it was money well spent. I'll include a few photos we took during all this and will let you know how things are going in another post.