November 3 - 24, 2005 - El Salvador

Upon returning to El Salvador, we discovered that the new charger/inverter had been damaged during shipping beyond repair and could not be installed. We immediately ordered another from West Marine. After an error at West Marine the second charger./inverter arrived some 10 days later and it took us 4.5 hours to get it out of customs after paying $300 in duty and taxes. This charger/inverter was also damaged and it would not work. So, our third one arrived a week later via DHL.

During this wait we found that our new bottom paint of 2 months was faulty. It seemed to attract barnacles rather than slough them off so we beached Dream Caper and the painters sanded and repainted her. Well, she was not beached high enough so they had to re-beach her again to paint her keels. And, when they did, they botched it. We refused to go through this process again. We have the paint and will finish the keels somewhere else down the line.

With these problems and others which we have not described, we finally determined that the sailing gods or spirits were working against us. Three and a half years ago when we bought Dream Caper in Martinique and renamed her, we were told that we should perform a renaming ceremony. We poo-pooed such superstitious beliefs. After a very enjoyable cruisers’ Thanksgiving feast and with great ceremony, we asked the gods and sailing spirits to forgive us for not properly renaming the boat. Our offerings were Flor de Cana rum, a fine Nicaraguan rum, and M&Ms with peanuts. Earlier in the day we obliterated the old boat name from every item on the boat, mostly on the life jackets and the horseshoe life float. We sacrificially poured rum and threw M&Ms into the water on all four corners of the boat to get rid of the old name and repeated the four cornered offerings to officially name her Dream Caper. To show our serious commitment, we also drank rum at each of the four corners. With rum “fires” in our stomachs, we went even further and threw a roll-up French hose which was on the boat when we first bought her into the iridescent water. It was quite beautiful in the dark as there is currently so much plankton in the water that each splash of rum, M&Ms and the hose brought forth a bright fluorescence flash. We hoped that at last we had satisfied the powers of the sea and the wind.

The next day when the 3rd charger/inverter was installed, it worked.