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

Thursday, 6 September 2018

Dinghy cruising: the standing lug sail rig - some refinements today

Well today I managed to get out and work on Arwen whilst she is parked on the driveway.
Following on from all the advice offered over the last couple of weeks I made the following rigging changes.

1. I moved the peak of the mainsail further up the top yard to the very aft end. For some obscure unfathomable reason, I had it around 9 inches lower down the yard. I am hoping that this will now raise the tack several inches off the deck and coaming area

2. I bought new, smaller blocks for the down-haul tackle and re-rigged it. Now a line with an S hook attached can clip into the sail tack eyelet. This line runs vertically down through the deck, around 55mm back from the mast rear face, around a turning block attached to the reinforced thwart seat top below and attaches to the block and tackle of the down-haul. I re-positioned the attachment points for the block and tackle - moving it further back towards the front of the centre case. I should now be able to tighten up the luff and pull it further down and closer in to the mast where it goes through the deck

3. I have altered the parrel bead set up so that it is much closer around the mast. again a simple S hook attached to it will now attach to the tack eyelet. This arrangement should bring the sail tack far closer to the mast and in conjunction with the above changes mean that the sail tack doesn't brush against the coaming when fully tensioned.

4. In order to move back the down-haul block and tackle towards the centre-case front, I had to also move back and re-position the up-haul for the centreboard

5. i also added another stainless steel ring on the top yard for the mainsail halyard to run through. I now have rings positioned at the 30% and 40% marks along the yard. The main halyard runs through one of these rings, around the port side of the mast and gets tied off on another ring at its very forward end. This arrangement works well, holding the yard near vertically and very tightly against the mast. The yard doesn't drift or flog away from the mast and it has significantly improved sail shape already.

The two articles below summarise where I was with my understanding of sail trimming and rigging on Arwen, prior to all the helpful comments given me over the last two weeks.

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

https://arwensmeanderings.blogspot.com/2018/03/using-sprit-boomed-standing-lug-sail.html


Next week, after returning from a short break, I intending getting Arwen out on the water in a stiff breeze. Plymouth Sound should give me plenty of space to practise reefing, heaving to, sailing under main and mizzen, main alone and jib and mizzen.  After my Salcombe scare, it is time to 'get back on the horse'!!

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