Arwen's meanderings

Hi everyone and welcome to my dinghy cruising blog about my John Welsford designed 'navigator' named Arwen. Built over three years, Arwen was launched in August 2007. She is a standing lug yawl 14' 6" in length. This blog records our dinghy cruising voyages together around the coastal waters of SW England.
Arwen has an associated YouTube channel so visit www.YouTube.com/c/plymouthwelshboy to find our most recent cruises and click subscribe.
On this blog you will find posts about dinghy cruising locations, accounts of our voyages, maintenance tips and 'How to's' ranging from rigging standing lug sails and building galley boxes to using 'anchor buddies' and creating 'pilotage notes'. I hope you find something that inspires you to get out on the water in your boat. Drop us a comment and happy sailing.
Steve and Arwen

Wednesday 11 January 2012

a wonderful surprise................

My family got together last week with the family of my close friend. We (the adults) are teachers; the children are the same ages and we have known each other for nearly twenty one years! We get on well and enjoy each others company. My friend is my sailing partner - he got me into boat building when he handed over a partially completed 'Highlander' which needed fitting out and painting. That was my first boat 'Pugwash'. I loved that boat and we pottered around Plymouth Sound. It was my fishing boat - I never bothered to build the mast, centreboard case etc. I just used it as a fishing dinghy with my old tohatsu 3.5 hp engine hanging off the side. It was taking life in your hands at times. It only had a 14" high freeboard; and out in a swell - life got interesting if you stood up. On one occasion I caught a bass and nearly joined it in the briny when trying to lift it out of the water with a net.

Anyway I'm digressing. My friend - my sailing buddy, sailing mentor and sailing instructor (he's very experienced, owned several small boats and handles Arwen far better than me!!) surprised me last week by presenting me with a new red hard backed log book for Arwen. I'm really chuffed! Up to now I record voyages on the blog in general details and I briefly summarise the voyage in an RYA logbook which is getting tatty.

Now this new log book - well - what can I say - it has everything! there are pages for waypoint lists, serial numbers of my equipment (outboard to VHF radio); a visitors page and an very useful page on buoyage because I keep forgetting which side of cardinal buoy points to go on!

The actual log pages are very detailed. There are sections of tides and weather forecast updates (nicely arranged into sea areas, wind now, wind later, weather, sea state and visibility). The main page is columns (time, course steered, log reading (haven't got one of them on Arwen), wind speed (need one of those hand held windy things - anemometers), latitude, longitude, barometer (nope missing one of them too); tide adjustments and then a wide column at the end for log narrative). Each page has plenty of space to write on.

It was a really nice kind gesture and now I'm faced with a dilemma - should I back date it i.e. fill in all my entries from the old RYA paper log book (which are thin on detail) or should I just start the new red log book from 2012?

Umm! decisions, decisions! How much time do I have; what's the point of copying it all out again (although it makes nice reading); can I just elastic band in the old book to the inside cover of the new one?

i think I'm leaning to finding a way of inserting the old log book by gluing it to the back inside cover. The trailer tickets which I get each time I visit QAB I also keep in an envelope and I could glue those into the inside front cover. in this way everything including my dinghy certificates are all inside the new red book - a perfect solution!

Did I say Arwen and I are really chuffed to have a new shiny red log book from our good friend?

Steve

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