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

Sunday, 11 September 2016

Winter jobs on Arwen

Tasks for winter
Painting Arwen
Varnishing woodwork
Minor repairs to sail batten pockets where stitching has become frayed or loose
Making a new sleeping platform
Repositioning some cockpit cleats
Building a galley box that fits nicely in the port forward cockpit well
Altering the snotter so that the rope runs down through the deck, around a small box and back along the side of the centre case to aft cockpit, thus allowing control of it from cockpit.
Trimming reefing lines because they are too long
Installing another set of deck eyes on the  coaming further forward to take another length of plastic pipe to help stretch out the tent tarpaulin when erected
Repairing rear trailer roller
Putting foam mat collars on the rigid upper boat rollers to stop them chipping paint off on some Chines
Repairing slight tear in tarpaulin tent
Putting on the mast small thin halyard on small blocks for attaching and hauling up mast anchor light and ball
Replacing one or two jam cleat blocks which have seen better days
Replacing deck eye on tiller helm impeder to make rope flow better through it
Altering clew mainsail attachment to the sprit boom. Going back to how it was originally which was attached with a large carabiner clip at very aft end.
Altering length of winch strap on trailer. It doesn't run all the way to end of trailer which is irritating
Running two bow lines from the stem head area, one down each side deck, outside the shrouds, back to the aft cockpit
Buying a 12' gardening cane and marking it off in one foot intervals........a sounding cane for creek crawling next season
Making up a simple lead line on an old crabbing line winder

2 comments:

Stuart said...

Apart from all that, the rest of the time's your own! Good luck!
Stuart

steve said...

Thanks Stuart. No doubt half of it wont get done due to work commitments. Already between now and end of October I have two weekends over to residential trips with students and the year has barely begun. I may need to rationale my expectations and list 😀