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

Friday 26 April 2013

Some simple adaptations

A few weeks ago, I altered the rear cleat position for the mizzen sheet. I cut a mahogany block from some old scrap timber I had lying around and angled it slightly along one face so that when offered up to the back coaming it lay slightly angled downwards. Screwed into the coaming, the cleat was added.
I have to say it works; and works well indeed. Not pretty but definitely functional. No more scrabbling around to secure the mizzen sheet; just one sharp tug downwards does the job. Wonderful.

So now I have to do the same with the jib side cleats. Now when solo sailing, I just let the jib sheets pass through the coaming hole and down to the rear of the centre case top. Here one of them passes through a huge deck loop before being tied to the other jib sheet. In this way, I never lose a jib sheet and they are easily jammed into the cleat on the aft end of the centreboard case cover.

However with crew in the boat, it has been necessary to part the sheets and the crew fumbles to try and secure it low down to their side. These new blocks should stop that from happening. However, I need to make them low profile one so that they don't dig into the crew's ribs or get accidentally knocked off the coaming by an over vigorous crew member.




I'll let you know how they turn out

Steve

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