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

Friday 22 May 2020

A favourite walk

I love in a stunning part of the country with some spectacular coastal scenery. A favourite walk is from Noss Mayo across to Stoke and back along the country lanes.  The river Yealm is also a nice day sail from Plymouth Sound and many a time I have slipped alongside the bar and anchored at Cellars Beach.

Just down from The Ship pub at Noss Mayo

Across the creek - The Swan

Other side of the creek - Newton Ferrers


If I win the lottery........

Or maybe this one........

Definitely this one I think

With this possibly sat on my 'free' mooring


The hidden entrance to the Yealm pool


What I call the Yealm pool where two confluences meet

around the bend to the right and up to the photos above

Looking seaward and  the hidden beach of Wembury - our 'family' go to beach for so many years 

Looking towards outer Plymouth Sound with the Great Mewstone Island on the left and Rame Head to its right in the distance. Plymouth Sound is to the far right. 

Looking back inland to the tight bend up to Noss Mayo and Newton Ferrers

Out along the South West Coastal Footpath


Spent many a time down there fishing for ray, bass and wrasse


I spy HMS Queen Elizabeth afar


a National Trust holiday cottage - or it used to be




And then some good news....some really good news. Thanks to Paul down in Cornwall, the sheared bolt was professionally drilled out of the manifold and a heilicoil inserted.  0600 yesterday I was up and the manifold and carburettor had been reassembled by 0625!
I then used CRC 6-66 marine spray, as recommended to me by JW himself.

At 1400 yesterday, the outboard started on the very first pull of the starter cord - it has never done that before. Ticking over and accelerating in gear perfectly although I will run longer tests today. 

The mere fact that it started makes me a very, very relieved man - I would never have heard the end of it from 'the boss' if I hadn't got that engine going again!

Manifold in; throttle assembly back on and tension-ed correctly, carburettor fixed in. 

Petrol tank back on....


4 comments:

Steve-the-Wargamer said...

...bet that was a relief! Good result.. and thanks for the heads up on CRC 6-66 - with the extended hiatus I may get some to give the engine a spray to take it through to the next time it's used..

steve said...

I'd never heard of it before - always using WD40. But this stuff puts a thin protective film across everything. I read the instructions carefully and the safety leaflet that came with it and it said it was OK on ignition systems, plugs,electrical parts, all moving parts and rubber hoses etc. So I didn't go overboard with the spray but used it carefully.

The carburettor clean wasn't as successful as I'd hoped for, as you will see in the last video out next week - but it is cleaner than it was and it seems to be working fine. I have had the engine running in gear on lower throttle in the water bin for twenty minutes with no problem.

The carb went back on fine as well thanks to Paul who rescued me. I guess there is a lesson - which is let the professionals service your engine but then I think to myself - we do the oil top up and basic maintenance on a car. I took apart and rebuilt from component pieces a two stroke 1965 vespa. If people didn't try things and try to learn new things then where would we be with advances in science and engineering? Ok, I guess a little knowledge isn't a good thing but someone somewhere had to experiment and try in order to make mistakes and learn what and what could not be done in the future?

So mixed feelings about the whole affair - on the one hand I have learned lots and done some fairly simple stuff - oil changes, spark plug changes, carb clean of a sort, impeller changes and on the other hand.......if we all did this we would put small company/chandlers service engineers out of business...and that is a bad thing. Ho Hum! Plenty to muse on.

Enrico said...

Spectacular places Steve! ..and photos as well!

steve said...

Thanks Enrico