Estero Jaltepeque, El Salvador
How quickly things can change...
Just last week, we were gearing up to leave El Salvador - just had to do some last minute shopping and we would be on our way. Susanne figured out the best possible day to leave, based on tides and such, and the decision was made to cross the bar at around noon on December 29th (yesterday as I am writing this). However the fates conspired against us and here we sit.
On December 23rd, I took it upon myself to do some long overdue cleanup in the engine compartment, scrubbing off the accumulated dirt and rust and repainting some of hardware down there. When I was cleaning up the engine a bit, I found some suspicious residue around the thermostat housing, most likely a result of a dripping overflow tube from the heat exchanger. I cleaned out the odd, whitish greenish, gunk only to discover a great gaping hole beside the thermostat - in the top of the water pump housing. Not good news. A bit of testing (just loosened the radiator cap a bit) resulted in a flood of cooling water gushing out of the hole. Basically, the engine is totally out of commission until I can get this repaired or replaced. Unfortunately the timing, just before Christmas and New Years, has pretty much eliminated any possibility of getting anything accomplished until January. One the plus side, at least we are in a nice, safe spot in which to wait out the time. We had already planned to be here for Christmas, New Years is just sort of a bonus.
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| Breakfast at the Mar y Sol restaurant on the day before Christmas. Most locals spend the time with family. |
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| Typical El Salvadorian breakfast. Scrambled eggs, fried plantains with thick cream, beans and cheese. |
Christmas day, at our friends Lou and Lynn's home, was a great success. Lots of local families and their kids as well as pretty much the entire current cruising community was in attendance. We even broke our cardinal rule and stayed till well after 7PM, forcing us to navigate the 3-1/2 miles down the estuary in the dark - it wasn't as harrowing as we thought it would be, and we were able to buddy-boat with another dinghy, just in case.
Yesterday (the day we were supposedly going to be leaving) turned out to be very exciting in a totally different way. Around noon, we started to see an odd cloud moving in from the west. Suspecting some sort of storm, we did not venture far from the boat. As the cloud started to block out the sun, we started to notice some fine dust accumulating on everything, so we closed up all of the ports and hatches to keep it out of the cabin. At this point all we could think was that there was some sort of sand-storm happening, but we couldn't figure out where it could be coming from. After a call from Jean (our local host), we found out it was ash coming from the San Miguel volcano.
The ash continued to accumulate all afternoon and made a real mess on the decks - I can only imagine what it must be like closer to the volcano itself - we are nearly 200km away. Later, looking up on the Internet, we could see that we were right in the path of the ash cloud - just our luck! A lot of cleaning required. We just hope this is not going to be a daily chore. So far today, it looks clear. |
| Solar power compromised! |
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| Ash cloud right over top of us! |
The worst problem, as far as I am concerned, is that if the ash continues to come, we cannot leave without a working engine!Regardless, we hope everyone had a great Christmas and we wish you all a Happy New Year!
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