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 August 2019

Some tiller and rudder adjustments

Sometimes something happens for which you cannot account. Take, for example, my rudder. For nine years the rudder down-haul has worked perfectly and then for no reason that I can discern, it suddenly stopped working on the recent Southpool Creek trip and I had to keep leaning over the transom to push it down in to place - extremely irritating I might add.



Not bent, not jammed, didn't hit the bottom with it. Ropes all move freely. It just stopped working of its own accord.

So today a little rudder TLC and whilst I was at it I made some adjustments to the tiller as well.

Firstly, I re-threaded the down-haul and moved one eyelet where it secured it to the base of the rudder tiller  stock.

And hey presto, with that one small alteration, it started working again - go figure!

The addition of an extra eye guide at the base of the rudder stock made all the difference but don't ask me to explain why - I genuinely have no idea - but it now works again and that is the main thing

On the tiller, I moved one or two cleats to new positions to make handling of down-haul and up-haul easier, filled in some screw holes with wood filler and installed a new metal eye for the tiller tamer.
The old eye was beginning to cause the tiller tamer rope loop to jam - again for no particular reason I could discern - wear and tear I guess.


It's nice to potter for an hour or so in the workshop, aka the garage, doing odd little jobs. Makes me feel all happy and productive - how weird is that?

The big white plastic eye has been removed and the new silver circular eye replaces it

The black cleat has been moved from on top of the tiller to the new side position, allowing the extension pole to sit better on the tiller top when not being used. 

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Feeling happy and productive after pottering in the workshop is not weird at all! Especially not pottering with a boat.

Keep it up!

Cheers,

Owen

steve said...

Thanks Owen - about to try and make some new better wooden blocks for Arwen and also a canvas tool ditty bag as well - like to keep myself busy :)