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

Monday, 5 May 2014

A refurbished rudder for a welsford navigator

Arwen will be back in service from next weekend. After carefully sanding the rather large torn chunk section in the rear of the rudder, I decided against an all out cut out and stick in new piece job. It wasn't quite as bad as I had feared and so I have smoothed it to a significant 'dent' and that's it. It's not  a botch job so much as a 'lasting temporary repair'.

The rudder is now outdoors. In the nice warm bank holiday weather, yes i'll say that again, in the nice warm, sunny, bank holiday weather......the rudder has been given three coats of aluminium flake paint and three coats of international toplac white. The rudder stock has also been touched up with international toplac bounty red.

Fittings have been tightened and all is well. Alongside this the back decking has been pressure washed; new tubs planted; the veg boxes sorted and a new plastic outdoor garden tool storage bin assembled. All is well and as it starts to cloud over I am heading in to do four or five hrs school work in preparation for next week.

I like four day weeks. I am sure productivity would increase, there would be less sick time taken and the nation would be far happier if we did three day weekends. Maybe I'll run for parliament on this mandate!!!!

Steve

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