Coruna to Porto Santo - Break on Through

"Mañana" rarely means "tomorrow". The most accurate translation seems to be "not today". So in the second week of the engine installation, we gave up trying to predict our departure date, but agreed to be ready to leave as soon as the work was done.
And so it was that we slipped lines on Friday, the 3rd of October. Leaving the new engine turned off, we sailed out of the marina and continued in light winds past the waterfront we had had so much time to explore. A NWly flow promised headwinds from Coruna to Finisterre, but fast sailing South after rounding the north-western corner of Spain. By early Saturday, we headed a few miles offshore, found the sudden right wind shift where the flow diverges around the mountainous mainland, tacked South, and by evening we were reaching along the rhumb line at 6-7 knots with a building breeze behind us.

Repairing the tiller pilot socket

One pieces of equipment that makes sailing the boat easier is the tiller pilot. On Auriga, it is inserted into a socket glued into the reinforced wooden lid of the starboard cockpit locker, and attaches to a pin on the tiller via a plastic end cap. Shortly before the single-handed Biscay crossing it became apparent that the wood around the socket was rotten and hardly up to the job - a consequence of pressure-fitting the socket directly into the wood and the non-slip layer trapping any moisture inside it. The socket pulled out easily, and cutting away the non-slip revealed the damaged area of approx. 10cm long, 4cm wide and 1-2cm deep. The moisture had predominantly spread along the fibers.

Affected area