Realities of cruising

Estero Jaltepeque, El Salvador

New Years has come and gone and things were just going too well to last.

For New Years eve, we had some company over to the boat in the evening, then stayed up really late to watch the fireworks along the estuary.  A very spectacular display, with every hotel and resort and quite a few of the private residences trying to outdo each other with pyrotechnics.  There were some sort of fireworks going off continuously from about 6 PM until 2 AM, with a concentrated effort from about 15 minutes to midnight until 15 minutes after - at that point there were at least a dozen venues simultaneously competing for our attention.  We just sat on the deck of the boat and took it all in - no point in going to bed with all of the noise all around anyway.

Bird on a wire?

A couple of days later, it was time to tackle the water pump issue on our engine.  We took our dinghy up the estuary to Paradise Fishing Lodge, where we had kept the boat last summer.  We lucked out and John (the owner) and his wife were in residence.  With their help (they have a diesel repair business in Delaware) we were able to order a new water pump and anticipated delivery within a couple of days - they had someone coming down with other parts so they just added ours to the list.  Everything was looking up at this point.

Unfortunately, the east coast of the USA was hit with some severe winter weather about then.  This resulted in flight cancellations and delays that meant our part was not going to arrive as quickly as we had anticipated.  Based on this information, and the fact that our 90-day tourist visas were about to expire, we decided that we were not likely to be able to leave while these visas were still valid - this can cause quite an issue when trying to check out of the country.  So, we elected to apply for a 90-day visa extension.

To renew a visa, without leaving the country, requires a passport, a letter explaining why we want to stay (engine problems on the boat) endorsed by some trusted local person (the manager at the Bahia del Sol resort), delivered in person to the immigration office in San Salvador, along with a 3-page visa application form filled in for each person.  Assisted by our friends Bill and Jean, we travelled to San Salvador and handed in our applications.  Of course, they wanted more information, namely our boat registration to prove we had a boat and bank statements to prove we were solvent.  We returned to the estuary and, via the internet, gathered the required info, along with anything else we could think of, and returned to the office the next day.  This time, they accepted the application and gave us a date and time, two days later (3:30 PM on Friday the 10th of January) to return and retrieve our passports with the new visas.  We returned on the Friday, arriving at the office at about 3PM and were told we had to wait until 3:30 - we were OK with that.  At about 3:40, a very nice lady who spoke very good English, came and told us that the applications were being "processed" and would likely be ready next week sometime.  They gave us a temporary card which said we could pick up our passports on the 21st of the month.  Needless to say we were somewhat disappointed.

Meanwhile, sitting on a mooring in the estuary has proven to us that our house batteries are really not any good any more.  I have been swapping out batteries until we were down to only 2 that were holding any amount of charge.  Since we had to travel in and out of San Salvador for the visas, we took the opportunity to buy some very reasonably priced replacements.  With this in mind, the rental vehicle that Bill and Jean got was a roomy van.  In addition, we used the frequent trips into the city to do some serious re-provisioning, plus another trip to the nearby town of La Libertad to visit the local fish market.

 

On the same Friday, 10th of January, that we made our last trip into San Salvador, our new water pump arrived and we were able to pick it up on the way.  Things were looking up again.

This weekend, I spent the majority of my time swapping out the water pump.  This turned out to be a much more difficult job than I anticipated, primarily due to recalcitrant frozen bolts and one embarrassing session of looking for close to 3 hours for a unique nut that I dropped into the bilge.  As of yesterday, the new water pump is installed and I ran the engine for more than an hour without any apparent leaks.

New pump in place and all plumbing reconnected

So, at this point in time, the boat is fully functional again and we could leave any time except that now we have no passports, so we can't leave the country.  Yesterday, Sunday, was the day our visas were to expire, so it was a smart move to get them extended, but sitting here watching our friends getting ready to leave, it is frustrating to just sit here unable to even say when we could get underway.

On the plus side, we are sitting in a place that is as close to paradise as we could ever imagine, and if we wanted, we could now stay legally for another 3 months.

{GMST}13|18.396|N|88|54.0948|W|Estuary Mooring, El Salvador|Estuary Mooring, El Salvador{GEND}