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 August 2019

Discovering my old planning scrapbook for Arwen

When I first decided I would build a navigator back in 2007 or so, I researched everything I could find about the design online.


I printed off pictures and comments about the boat in various forums.


 I contacted people by email and asked for their views.


I annotated pictures, found paint charts and spent ages poring over plans.


I visited little wooden boat shows like Beale Park and took photographs of boat features I liked and might replicate on my navigator build.


I drooled over the build photo files of Barrett Faneuf.  I dreamed about Dave Perillo's 'Jaunty'. I was fascinated by Wilhelm's build.


Anyway, as you can see, clearing through the study and tidying up shelves I found the 'ideas pre-build scrap book'. I can't find the build photographs of Arwen - they are around somewhere in a separate album and will turn up eventually.


Brings back lots of memories of happy evenings after school work spending an hour or so late in the evening when the family had gone to bed - collecting photos and annotating them with random thoughts.



30 pages of annotated photographs and scrawls - a few hours pondering and many cuppas - went into this scrap book

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