Cannot connect Stash to MySQL database

2012-11-27 21:38:56,806 INFO  [http-7990-5] 1298x15x1 1aan3w6 0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1%0 "POST /setup HTTP/1.1" c.a.s.i.m.DefaultMigrationService Setting up external database at jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/stash131?autoReconnect=true&characterEncoding=utf8&useUnicode=true&sessionVariables=storage_engine%3DInnoDB
2012-11-27 21:39:01,305 WARN  [http-7990-5] 1298x15x1 1aan3w6 0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1%0 "POST /setup HTTP/1.1" c.a.s.i.m.DefaultMigrationService A connection could not be opened with the DataSource
com.mysql.jdbc.exceptions.jdbc4.MySQLNonTransientConnectionException: Could not create connection to database server. Attempted reconnect 3 times. Giving up.
	at sun.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance0(Native Method) ~[na:1.6.0_37]
	at sun.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.java:39) ~[na:1.6.0_37]
	at sun.reflect.DelegatingConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(DelegatingConstructorAccessorImpl.java:27) ~[na:1.6.0_37]
	at java.lang.reflect.Constructor.newInstance(Constructor.java:513) ~[na:1.6.0_37]
	at com.mysql.jdbc.Util.handleNewInstance(Util.java:411) ~[mysql-connector-java-5.1.17.jar:na]
	at com.mysql.jdbc.Util.getInstance(Util.java:386) ~[mysql-connector-java-5.1.17.jar:na]
	at com.mysql.jdbc.SQLError.createSQLException(SQLError.java:1013) ~[mysql-connector-java-5.1.17.jar:na]
	at com.mysql.jdbc.SQLError.createSQLException(SQLError.java:987) ~[mysql-connector-java-5.1.17.jar:na]
	at com.mysql.jdbc.SQLError.createSQLException(SQLError.java:982) ~[mysql-connector-java-5.1.17.jar:na]
...
Caused by: java.sql.SQLException: Unexpected exception encountered during query.
...
Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException: null
	at com.mysql.jdbc.ConnectionImpl.getServerCharacterEncoding(ConnectionImpl.java:3100) ~[mysql-connector-java-5.1.17.jar:na]
	at com.mysql.jdbc.MysqlIO.sqlQueryDirect(MysqlIO.java:2095) ~[mysql-connector-java-5.1.17.jar:na]