It rained a lot in Ribadeo and the harbour turned out to be not as protected as I would have thought. Amy was constantly rolling and banging against the fenders and sleeping was getting harder and harder. I decided to repair my anemometer. After two days of climbing the mast and getting my bunk wet because I had left the hatch open when it started to rain (I was up on the mast and couldn’t get down fast enough), I became very frustrated and gave up.
I was sleeping in a wet bunk now and I had also noticed that water was coming in through the roof and soaking the wooden beam that is supporting the mast and I finally had sort of a breakdown. I had come to the point where I wanted to go home. Sell the boat and end my adventure right there. Luckily friends and family talked me out of it and helped me to think straight again.
At least I had found out that the fault must lie in the cable in the mast and so I got a 15m ISDN cable from a TV repair shop for later installation.
I also needed to get out of Ribadeo (although it is a very nice town and a very friendly harbour) in order to get some rest. I left the next Wednesday for Viveiro. I already knew Viveiro from crewing on another boat nine years ago for a delivery from England to Portugal. I had the wind on the nose all day of course but with a bit of tide from behind we were able to tack our way to windward and after 11 hours and 30 miles made it in to the Ría de Viveiro.
I stayed at anchor by the beach for two sunny days that were incredibly relaxing and very quiet. No swell, no rolling, I could dry my things and only one other boat from Canada in the bay with us. The weather was supposed to get bad from Friday so I turned into the marina which was also very quiet. I had finally rested enough to catch up on some projects. First the leak in the coachroof needed to be taken care of. Then I spliced my 100m rope to the sea anchor and set everything up so it would be ready to deploy in case of need on my trip to Madeira.
After that I couldn’t help but get back to the anemometer problem. I had wanted to solder a plug connection but gave up after hours of bad soldering and almost setting the boat on fire.
A guy from a boat repair shop sold me some connectors that were easy to rig while being up on the mast. The really hard part was getting the old cable out of the mast and the new one in. But after a days work and being up and down about five times I managed and everything worked as knew. I was extremely happy and looking forward to go on sailing the next day.
