La Coruña is a short stop on the Peggy Sue’s route from England toward the Atlantic, where the family takes stock after a punishing passage through the Bay of Biscay. The port offers a moment of rest and repair, but the voyage’s hazards remain visible in Michael’s mother’s exhaustion and the unresolved problem with the rudder cable.

Position on the Voyage

The family had set out from Southampton with plans to cover about two hundred miles a day, but during the first week they were fortunate to make fifty. The Bay of Biscay proved especially rough: a Force 9 gale, at times Force 10, threw the Peggy Sue about so violently that Michael thought the boat might sink. He saw its bow point straight up at the moon before the boat plunged down the other side of a wave. The family survived and made it to Spain, with La Coruña serving as their first recorded stop after the storm.

Rest and Repair

The family spent only a couple of days in La Coruña. Michael’s mother slept much of the time, worn out by the passage. While she rested, Michael’s father worked on the rudder cable, but he was still dissatisfied with it when they left. The brief stop therefore brought some recovery without fully resolving the boat’s mechanical vulnerability.

Departure and Narrative Significance

Two days after leaving La Coruña, the family set off for the Azores. The stop belongs to the early sequence of the voyage recorded in Michael’s private log, whose short entries preserve the practical details of life at sea alongside his changing impressions. La Coruña marks a threshold between the danger of the Bay of Biscay and the next leg of the journey: a temporary pause on land, followed by renewed exposure to the open ocean and the continuing need to manage fatigue and faulty equipment.