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 27 May 2018

Dinghy cruising: The Penlee Point picnic: part three

Here is the last of the vlog videos from last weeks day trip. I'm using new video editing software called 'Shotcut'. You may remember I lost my favourite moviemaker after my laptop crashed and we had to do a factory reset. I lost the touch screen capability s well (something that irritates me no end I might add).

Shotcut is open source software and so far I am very impressed. It is free as well and gets regular updates. It was recommended on a number of tech sites.  So far I haven't even dipped below the surface of what it can do but I am finally getting the basics and I have come to learn that it is basically a more advanced form of moviemaker, albeit in a different format. it is a steep learning curve particularly on sound editing but we are slowly, and I emphasise slowly, getting to grips with its complexities.

I got to test out on this trip the new arrangement on the top yard. In previous posts I have mused on what I have learnt (or failed to have learnt) about the standing lug rig.  I have put the two links to the articles below:

https://arwensmeanderings.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/setting-up-standing-lug-sail-part-1.html

https://arwensmeanderings.blogspot.co.uk/2018/04/using-standing-lug-sail-with-sprit-boom.html

Essentially, I could never get the top yard to set correctly against the mast. This is because I used a rope loop which I tied onto the yard and when the yard lowered it seized on the mast halfway down.

This time, I did some research on Duckworks Magazine and other sites and tried out a new method. On the yard I lashed on a small stainless steel ring at the very fore end of the yard and another at what I calculated to be around 35% up the yard. This latter one is the estimated halyard tie on position. Now I take the main halyard which comes down from the main mast sheave and pass it through the upper ring, around the port side of the mast (the yard lies on the starboard side) and they tie it off on the lower ring with a bowline.

And hey presto it worked. No more flailing yard; no more knocking against the mast; no more tendency for it to suddenly switch mast sides after a tack; and yes, the lower part of the yard does just sit forward of the mast as it should. Hallelujah!

And yes, you might well ask why it took me so long to sort it out.
Genuinely?
I have absolutely no idea!

I hope you enjoy this last video about the Penlee Picnic.




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