All, I finally managed to get testing and indeed I was able to make the connection through without any helper modules. The modules ip_conntrack_ipsec.o and ip_nat_ipsec.o it would seem are an urban legend.
I would like to say thanks to Harald Welte and Antony Stone for taking the time out to respond and to Pavlos Parissi for sending his test results to me. Much appreciation specifically to Julian Gomez for being so polite when I was self assured and completely wrong. Thanks all, /Eric
