I might be able to fit in another little sail this weekend, if the weather holds. Gosh two trips inside two weekends..........life is looking good. Might try and scootle up the Tamar , if the tides and wind fall right!

And, some rigging changes should see me sailing better and doing justice to the navigator design. The changes? Well so far in the last few weeks I have or will have by Saturday

• lengthened the snotter between its blocks
• made the up haul elastic stronger to lift the boom up better to hold it parallel to the snotter
• got rid of the silly green loop between mast and snotter (don't know why I put it there? Dur!!)
• sorted out the lazy Jacks and inserted a block on one to help act as an uphaul on it - so this will need a longer lazy Jack (it sounds complicated, isn't and rarely for me, I actually know what I'm doing with this one, because I'm pinching the idea off my friend's post boat!)
• tied the main halyard lower on the top yard
• used a bight of rope to tie main upper yard to mast instead of parrel beads - a system pinched from Duckworks, somewhere but can't remember where precisely, main thing is it works really well!
• reinstated the parrel beads at sail tack
• installed netting under front deck for storage
• installed straps across hull floor to secure sand ballast bags
• installed a helm impeder on the underneath of the tiller
• made the reefing ties on the sails longer (dur - learned that one the hard way as well)
• trimmed excess rope lengths - just about everywhere
• changed the mainsheet blocks to boom to a simple 2 to 1 purchase so Arwen performs better in lighter winds
• filled in the very nasty ding in front hull port side when the wind blew me rather violently into a pontoon support pole last weekend, whilst on final motor approach to the pontoon side. (the crunch could be heard for miles...but the damage is less than expected)
• installed elastic ties under starboard centre thwart cushion - for storage of charts
• rigged lazy jacks on the mizzen sail
• will have found the missing mizzen sail top batten (irritating - can't find where its lurking in the boat - urrr!)
• put in lots more elastic bungie and clips so that huge amounts get stored under side decks and out of the way (can't get over how Steve and Bruce sail in such an uncluttered boat - is that good house(boat) keeping or what)

well there we go

I'll make a decision about sailing at weekend tomorrow night and post a report then

Steve