I arrived in Mar del Plata on Tuesday morning, December 13, after several days of variable winds. For the final 12 hours I had wind right on the bow so I had no choice but to use the engine to make tangible progress and arrive at the marina during daylight hours.

Yacht Club Argentino (YCA) has a marina which can accommodate boats the size of Phywave so that’s where I was headed having contacted them a few weeks before to set it up. There is a yellow pedestrian swing bridge that must open for access to the mooring berths.  Outside the swinging bridge I was surprised to be met by two dinghies from YCA that tied Phywave  to a mooring buoy for about 30 minutes until the dockmaster could come out and lead me to my berth.  While the marina generally had European-style stern tie berths with pilings, the place they had for me was a side-tie to a long pontoon. It was easy to dock with them handling lines and will be easy to back out when I leave.

I originally planned Mar del Plata to be a short stop of a few days to re-provision the boat.  However, late in the passage from Cabedelo I had a serious failure – the u-bolt that attaches to the clew of the mainsail broke so when the sail was fully deployed the clew was flying free – not good.   I had to roll in the sail to the first reef to keep it under control. Even so, the tension on the clew along the foot and leach of the sail was lost. It wasn’t possible to attempt a repair or even investigate what had happened since the boom is high above the cockpit and I have to use an extension ladder I have on board to climb up there to look at the clew attachment u-bolt. I wasn’t going to try to set up the ladder while rolling around at sea.  When I finally was tied to the dock at YCA I climbed up there and found that one side of the stainless steel u-bolt that’s tied to the clew had sheared off so the clew slipped off the bolt. It’s a substantial u-bolt so I was really surprised if sheared off the way it did.  Anyway, one at the dock I was immediately engaged to trying to find a fix.  Just getting the boom furling drum apart to remove the broken u-bolt took a video sent to me by Schaefer, the boom manufacturer. Since a replacement u-bolt is not available locally, we will use a temporary fix with a soft shackle made from spectra line, strong stuff and ought to suffice until I can get the replacement u-bolt from Schaefer and install it.  The upside, I suppose, if there is one, is that I now know the Schaefer furling boom construction much better than before.  I hope to get the bush fix in and be on my way next Tuesday or Wednesday. From the blogs I’ve read by other cruising boats, it’s pretty routine to periodically have to fix broken things. Maybe I’ve been lucky before this point in having no major problems.

The marina at Mar del Plata is not in the greatest part of town.   And for some reason none of the ATM’s will accept my card so I’ve been here several days with no Argentine pesos in my pocket.  My card has worked in restaurants and shops  but I’m pretty sure I will need pesos to pay for the boom repairs.  I’ll have to track down to a money changer somewhere in this town.

I decided to take a break from living on the boat and booked a couple of nights in an ocean view room at a hotel that’s walking distance from the marina, where I am this morning.  The hotel also has fast wifi, unlike the marina, so I can update all the apps and charts on my iPads and iPhone and download a bunch more books. 

I’ve found a fairly large supermercado for provisions but I’ll have to use an Uber to transport the pile of supplies back to the marina.  I have a long list since will, in part, be shopping for the passage to Antarctica as well. The shops in Puerto Williams, the jumping off point for sailing to Antarctica, apparently have just basic things.  Puerto Williams is a small town, population about 2200, so no supermercados.