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

Saturday 3 October 2015

Dinghy cruising: How to get video of your boat sailing!

build one of these! Cost just about a tenner. Made of plastic gas pipe and push fittings and a swimming noodle. It floats. It's stable. You can adjust camera position. It doubles as a stable camera stand in the boat or on the deck.

You just have to get over the first hurdle! Throwing it into the water and then watching it drift off! On the other hand, it will certainly sharpen up MOB drill and retrieval won't it!

You can see more here on Kyle Martin's GoPro channel.

I'll let you know how I get on with it! Am in the middle of making one now!


5 comments:

Joel Bergen said...

One way to make this brilliant idea even better would be to add a "picavet suspension" (google it to learn more). It will stabilize the camera while the stand is bobbing on the waves for a much better video. And it would cost next to nothing to add.

steve said...

Now that is even cleverer but I think I'd have to raise the vertical arms slightly. The top cross piece is around 7 inches above the water level but you are right on waves it is certainly going to Bob. I wonder if I raised the vertical s to 12" whether that would upset stability? And would waves break over it more if it were suspended below?
Nice idea Joel. I feel more experimentation coming on

Anonymous said...

What you need is a passenger who's hobby is flying drones!

steve said...

Ha funny you should say that
I'm working on it

Bursledon Blogger said...

Rather than let if drift off you could anchor it on a shot line and sail past, that way you could be sure of background views also.