El Salvador

July and August - 2002

Monday  July 15, 2002 - Bahía del Sol

We arrived back on the boat last Wednesday after our great trip to Guatemala.  We spent one night with our great friends, from the rancho on Isla Cordoncillo, at their home in San Salvador.

The last few days we have been getting ourselves acclimatized to the boat again as well as getting started on the never-ending project list.  The projects this time are mainly of the normal maintenance type although there are a few repairs sprinkled in.

Here in the estuary there are still 12 boats but only 6 currently are occupied.  Two boats headed out the boca heading south just this last weekend.  The estuary is slowly emptying out as folks head further south or leave their boats for a stateside visit.

Wednesday  July 17, 2002

Yesterday we made an interesting trip into Zacatecoluca.  We were at the road by 8:30AM and soon were on the direct bus to Zacatecoluca.  It was about an hour and 15 minute ride and we got off at the new shopping center.  There Bill found the new internet café, which even allowed him to connect his own laptop.  I walked up the hill to the town center and the outdoor market.  I purchased a large bag of fresh vegetables for less than $4.00 US and then returned to the internet café.  After Bill completed his surfing - he had very little to do - we did our shopping at the large new supermarket next door.  We enjoyed an ice cream at the small ice-cream store in the parking lot while we packed all the groceries into our packs.  Then ate lunch at Camperos (a nice chain of chicken restaurants), before heading off to the bus station.  This is where things got interesting -- the Costa del Sur bus never arrived so we hopped on the direct bus to San Salvador getting off at the bridge over the road out to the coast.  There was a coast-bound bus waiting when we arrived so on we got, only the bus was already full to overflowing!  We did get on and about a dozen more passengers squeezed in before the bus took off.  A nice lady seated near to where I was standing held my heavy grocery sack in her lap until she exited and gave me her seat.  While waiting for the bus in Zacatecaluca we met another passenger that lives near to Roberto and Amanda’s rancho on the island.  I ended up sitting with her on the bus.  She has a canoe with a paddle parked on the peninsula side waiting for her to return and paddle back across to the island with her groceries.

It was a hot day so when we returned we enjoyed a large bottle of water, several cokes and a swim before returning to the boat.

Today Bill was not feeling well so we took it easy and put all the projects on hold for a day and just took the day off.

Monday July 22, 2002

Thursday Bill and I put in place Bill’s solution to the pesky starboard side water leak.  The bilge vent hose had too many low spots so when it took in water - rain perhaps - the water just sat in the hose and eventually found its way out into food storage cupboards.  Bill re-glued all lower fittings together with 3M-5200 and then installed a drain in the lowest portion of the vent hose, routing the water into the forward bilge.  We then made sure that all of the vent hose is up hill from the drain with no low spots.  The rainstorm over Friday and Saturday night showed us to be at least "temporarily" successful.

Saturday Bill got to working on the 12V power supply for my computer and it looks like he will finish it up today.

Yesterday, Sunday,  in the afternoon we again dinghied to the island to visit our friends.  We took my computer with all the photo albums that I had put together from our trip.  Everyone seemed to enjoy looking at the photos.  I took my camera and took pictures of the caretaker's family.  The children sure enjoyed seeing the photos after I downloaded them to the computer.

We still go to the hotel pool most late afternoons when it gets hot on the boat.  There we visit with the few other cruisers still here while cooling off in the pool with drinks in hand.  Not a bad life!!

Friday July 26, 2002

Another week is almost gone.  It has been a slow week for boat projects as Bill has picked up a cold and has taken it easy.  Bill has gotten back to writing the foto album program.  I successfully used the program - in its uncompleted form - to organize the photos of our Guatemala trip.  Last Sunday it had been put to use to show the pictures at the rancho, but now there are more additions that are desired as well as whatever is needed to be able to burn the albums onto CDs for distribution.

I brought come split coconuts back on Sunday from the rancho.  I carved out the meat and chopped it up with the food processor.  I then experimented with several recipes to make coconut bread.  I finally came up with a yummy loaf of bread yesterday.

The hotel continues to provide the Wednesday evening nibblies with happy hour drinks even though only 6 people were in attendance this week.

Sunday August 4, 2002

More than another week has passed and projects continue.  Early last week Bill removed the wind vane steering rudder as the rudder post had gotten seriously bent last April when we made our grand entrance into the estuary here.  Then on Thursday he got a ride with Murray and Colette of Tarazed into San Salvador.  The rudder shaft was dropped off at a stainless steel shop for repair and reinforcement.  Friday we made another trip into Zacatecoluca to purchase groceries and Bill undated our web page with our latest activities: the trip to Guatemala.

 It is vacation time for the residents of San Salvador.  Yesterday, Saturday,  Roberto arrived at his rancho and invited us to the rancho for "almuerzo" - lunch.  We dinghied over about 1:00 PM and spent the rest of the day visiting with him and other family members that arrived to spend vacation time at the rancho.  Amanda is in the states visiting her daughter.

This morning Roberto picked us up early for a nice walk on the beach at Isla Tasajera, the island that forms the opposite side of the boca.  We had a nice hour-long walk along the beach.  Then rode in their panga to and around the “bird island” - an Island that is covered with nesting white cranes.  We returned to the rancho for a wonderful late breakfast.  Very late morning when thier son Fernando and two of his friends returned to the mainland side, we got a ride back to Lanikai.  It was slack tide so we opted to go for a swim during which time Bill cleaned off the prop.

Tuesday August 6, 2002

Monday we were again off early with Roberto, Fernando and Juan’s two young boys for a walk on the beach.  Then we drove the panga up the estuary on the opposite side of the boca from where we are anchored, along the inland side of Isla Tasajera.  We stopped at a small village on the island and Fernando tried to negotiate for a dead ski-doo without success as the owner wanted too much for it.  Back down the estuary we stopped and visited a rustic hotel there with nice cabañas and a private beach on the ocean side of the island.  The water all along here is deep enough for our sailboats.  Another hotel for boats to anchor off of.

Last night I got sick, so today only Bill went on the panga ride to the mouth of the Rio Lempa that forms the east side of Isla Tasajera.  He enjoyed a nice walk on the delta with Roberto before returning to Bahía via a different path through the mangroves.

Friday August 9, 2002

Thursday we took the long bus ride into San Salvador to check on the windvane repair.  We also checked out an electronics shop for solar panel controllers, as that is our latest boat part that is failing.  They can not easily get us a new one but said that they could easily repair the old.  The we went looking for zippers with double sliders for our cockpit curtains, but with no luck.  We did enjoy a nice lunch at Plaza Galerias before returning to the bus station for our return trip to Bahía.

We now have a very shy kitty visiting us for two months.  Murray and Colette of Tarazed are taking a two month trip back to the states and we are cat sitting while they are away.  The cat arrived Thursday while we were off in San Salvador shopping and found a place to hide until after dark, when she came out to roam the decks.

Sunday August 11, 2002

Last night we had a thunder shower come through.  The wind gusted for just long enough that we had to take down the rain catcher to keep it from self destructing.  It then rained for several hours.  We did collect several buckets of water off the aft shade cloth that I dumped into the tank this morning.

Saturday our repaired windvane part was delivered to us at the hotel.  Since we had to go in to wait for the arrival of the part, we took our books and spent much of the afternoon reading between getting wet and cool in the pool.

Today we chose not to go ashore.  When Bill went over to Elsewhere to update the mail program on Matt and Judy’s computer, we were given a plant to take care of while they return to the states for a month.  We now are babysitting a shy cat and a plant.  The rest of the day Bill spent getting the latest version of the foto album program ready for me to try out.  I got some much needed laundry done with water collected Saturday night.

Wednesday August 14, 2002

Since Sunday the days have been sunny and warm but we seem to get a cooling breeze late each evening and by early morning a very light blanket feels good.  The wind seems to come from thunder storms that pass north of us nearer the mountains.

The repaired windvane was reinstalled on Monday and Tuesday during slack current but the rudder is still on deck as it has water in it that Bill would like to drain and dry first.

Bill has been putting lots of effort into the foto album program.  There are several other cruisers that would like to have it to organize their photos and Bill is getting real close to having a product that can easily be user installed.  He hopes to also have the ability to put several albums on a CD before he distributes the early beta test copies.

Monday August 19, 2002

Bill has been working almost full time on his photo album program.  One of the cruisers is flying to the states later this week and Bill is hoping to have a usable product on CDs for him to take to the US mail.  Our hope is to also be able to send out a few CDs with some of our photo albums to family members.

He was interrupted in his progress twice in the last few days.  First by a broken belt on the Kubota battery charger which only took about 30 minutes to replace.  The second breakdown took most of the day yesterday to fix.  Our little outboard is getting more cantankerous all the time and yesterday the pull cord chose to break again.  The cord is getting much more use as the number of pulls to start the wee beast has increased in the last few weeks.  Since the motor was on board, Bill cleaned out the carburetor as well so maybe for a few days it will work better.  As a result of the dead outboard we missed our Sunday visit with our friends Roberto and Amanda on the island.  We promised to do better next Sunday and to also visit them in San Salvador in a week or so.

Friday August 23, 2002

Yesterday Jerry from Beyond Reason carried 8 discs containing Bill’s foto album program and 9 albums of our photos on his flight north.  Bill was real busy at his computer the last few weeks in order to make this happen.  This all culminated Wednesday in the "big burn" when he burned the 8 copies of the CD, then wrote a letter to send with each, as there is not help file yet,  and affixed labels to them.  We took the stack into Jerry at Cruiser's Wednesday Happy Hour, when the restaurant provides nibblies and $1 drinks.  Over the last week, I spent many mornings putting the albums together.  We are still missing an album to contain our travels south from San Carlos this year and one covering the many activities in Mazatlán the prior winters and probably others that I have not thought of yet; but a large chunk of our photos are finally well organized.

Tuesday we took the day off to go into Zacatecoluca for shopping and to visit the internet café.  We returned about 2:30 very hot.  The bus ride back is always hot and long!!  We put the groceries in the dinghy, put on our suits and went for a swim.  Enjoying a first beer, other cruisers arrived for our regular late afternoon swim so we spent the next few hours enjoying their company.  By the time we were ready to return to the boat the dinghy was full of ants.  We got rid of what we could, launched the dinghy and when we arrived at Lanikai I handed down our can of bug spray before we brought anything on board.  We were lucky as when I unloaded the packs, no ants had gotten inside yet.  Next time we will return the dinghy to the water before we enjoy the pool.

Wednesday night just after Bill shut down his computer to go to bed I noticed that the 3.5 amps were still being drawn out of our batteries.  We turned off circuit breakers one at a time and discovered that the fresh water pump was the big draw.  Bill checked it out and it was hot.  It took about an hour to replace it with the spare as the spare still needed a repair too, although the needed part was in the box with it.  This morning on taking apart the faulty motor Bill discovered that it still worked fine but that the tiny micro switch that turns it on and off with the pressure had a broken pin.

Thursday Bill got 5 months of expenses typed into Quicken and balanced the bank statements for those months.  The Dean Witter bank statements are now downloadable from the web which is real convenient for us.  It took all day but he is now finished for another bunch of months.  The downturn of the stock market has hit us hard but since we are spending very little here most of our shares can sit and hopefully recover.

Monday August 26, 2002

Friday night we had a big rain storm that started while we were in at the pool.  We made a fast trip back to the boat to close it up for rain.  We collected some water but the rain passed and we returned to the pool leaving the boat closed up ready for more rain if it came, and it did.  We got a big rain dump while we were visiting in the restaurant with other cruisers.  Saturday morning we dumped the rain catcher water into our tanks and I made use of the dinghy-collected water to do a little laundry.

This Sunday our friends Amanda and Roberto left their rancho to return to San Salvador early so we did not get a chance to visit with them.  We did go over to their Rancho early afternoon anyhow and I swam with three children of the caretakers family while Bill visited with Juan.  Juan and Bill made a quick shopping trip in the panga to La Herradura.  After a swim in the hotel pool, we had cheeseburgers at the hotel.  They do a great real-US-style hamburger but you have to order it off the child’s menu.

Wednesday August 28, 2002

Bill and I took an early bus into San Salvador and had no trouble finding either the small switch for the water pump or the small belt for the alternator.  Another bus had us at Metro Sur, an older shopping center, where there is a great Mexican restaurant.  We enjoyed an early lunch before walking up the road to Amanda and Roberto’s office.  We had a short visit with Amanda then Fernando (their son) drove us to their home where we enjoyed a second lunch and visited with Fernando and Roberto before returning to the office.  Roberto drove us to Terminal Sur to catch the bus back to our boat, but only after we promised to return on Saturday for the weekend at their house.

Friday August 30, 2002

Change of plans for this weekend.  Juan (the caretaker at the Rancho) paddled over in his canoe yesterday afternoon to tell us that Amanda and Roberto are coming out to the rancho this weekend so they will meet us here instead of in town.  Bill showed Juan around the boat and he was most interested in everything.  We had a nice visit with him, our Spanish is constantly improving.  Then we went into the hotel for our late afternoon swim.

Bill tried to do the final installation of the windvane rudder but more problems.  Because of the recent welding, there are weld spatters inside the hinge mechanism.  So it is back on deck and he will spend some time each day filing on it until it all fits.