Picking up from the previous post, we had another full day of sailing in very hot and humid weather. We arrived at the staging area (to cross the river bar in the morning) at 0300. Literally, as we arrived, we started getting alarms that our starter battery was critically low. Nothing I can do about it at the moment so we lay down to get as much sleep over the next three hours as we could. The sound of the massive breaking waves on shore, and the motion as they passed under us, made for a very fitful night. Unsure of the correct time zone, we got up an hour early and, as the engine would not start, I had to remove a house battery and hold the leads onto the starter battery to jumpstart our engine. Not a very promising beginning to an extremely dangerous time when we are going to be running the engine at a higher rpm than ever before.
There were four other boats with us. When we got the call to meet our pilot a mile over, Tess went to bring up the anchor and there was a crash boom bang as she was going forward and a brown booby fell out of the sky onto the deck, having flown into our rigging! Nothing we could do for him so we wished him well and headed to the rendezvous point.
Crossing the bar into Bahia Del Sol, El Salvador, is both something that hundreds of boats have done and also one of the most dangerous things we will ever do on a cruising sailboat. Under the best of circumstances, you are riding breaking waves into a very narrow river mouth. On this day, the swells were much bigger than usual and the entrance had actually been closed for days. Our opinion, as we sat there watching the miles of massive waves breaking along the shore with no visible sign of any kind of an entrance or break in the swell, was that this might be the dumbest thing we’ve ever done. Eventually, the only boat among us that had done this before, went first and we all watched and listened to the radio communications. Immediately after that boat, we were summoned. The pilot, in an aluminum skiff directly in front of us, waited for the appropriate lull in the swells (not that anybody else could tell) and said, “OK, maximum rpm and follow me.“ As we built up speed a large swell passed under us but no big deal. I was at the wheel and Theresa was handling the radio in one hand and recording a video with her cell phone in the other hand – while trying to hang on. On the next wave we initially buried the bow as it raised the aft end of the boat and then we surfed for about 45 seconds, reaching a maximum speed of 15.7 knots! The breaking top of the wave was roughly at my shoulder height (we had raised the dinghy to its maximum possible height) and it pushed about 3 inches of water into the cockpit through the gaps on the side of our folding transom. When that wave finally pushed past under us, he handed us off to another pilot who guided us on the next wave, through the very narrow opening and into the river. In this manner they got all five boats through in about 45 minutes. Easily one of the most exciting (terrifying?) things we will ever do on our boat. Can’t wait to see what the exit is like…
10 minutes later, we docked at the marina where there were more workers to help than we had lines to throw. As we were tied off a waiter walked up with a round tray held up over his shoulder with two beers and two rum punches to welcome us! We had heard about this, so before 8 AM I had chugged a beer and downed my first rum drink of the day (not the last). Immediately behind the waiter was a uniformed official who requested our passports. He then walked away with them and Jean, the wife of Bill – the bar pilot, said, “Don’t worry, I’ll take you to get all the papers back.“ Mind you, I was just assuming that this was Jean, as of course we had never met or seen them before. Behind her was a guy who took our zarpe from Mexico and my Coast Guard boat registration and promptly walked away. Once all the boats were tied up and everybody had swapped their death-defying stories (and stop shaking from the adrenaline dump) Jean took us all up through the resort to the office where we paid our fees and got our paperwork back. Jean had called someone to come and rescue Ralph, the brown booby, but he apparently flew away while we were checking in. Either he recovered from his concussion or thought maybe we would come back and make him do the bar crossing again.
Jean and Bill are former cruisers who fell in love with this place in 2005 and never left. They live on an island in the middle of this massive estuary where multiple rivers pour into the ocean through a 100 yard gap in the sand. Recognizing the need for professional guidance, he appointed himself the pilot, hired some locals to drive the boats, and has been doing this ever since. He doesn’t get paid but the local boat drivers do. Their efforts to organize the locals and officials are the reason so many gringos are willing to stop in El Salvador, a place that is not exactly high on the world’s list of vacation destinations. If only there were more Jeans and Bills in this world…
As part of the checking in process, we paid $15 per week per boat for full use of the resort’s pools, bars and restaurants. In exchange we get 30% off all meals and drinks among other bennies.
The following day we joined a bunch of other cruisers and all took our dinghys down to a huge sandbar that develops at low tide on the other side of the entrance bar. Over the course of the afternoon a lot of local boats showed up and a few restaurants even set up tables and chairs for groups of diners on this temporary real estate. Pretty sure this is exactly one of the reasons we have chosen this lifestyle.
We all followed this afternoon party with the every-Saturday-at-Bill-and-Jean‘s-house event where we all sit in their tiny pool and then enjoy a dinner of pupusas, the national dish of El Salvador. Pupusas are a thick tortilla made of either rice or corn meal and stuffed with meat and cheese combinations. You fold them in half and eat them like a taco but always with your hands. Delicious and a whopping $.75 each. For the record, John won the breath holding contest with a full three minutes underwater.
Today, a bunch of us dinghy’d several miles up the main river (same width as the Mississippi with a current to match twice a day in each direction) to a restaurant for lunch. Like everything here, it is built on tall stilts out over the water. After lunch, everyone met at the tiki bar here at the resort for happy hour – two for one drinks. I know, it’s a hard life, but somebody has to do it.
