Is 'cosmetic' appearance important?

I keep having this internal debate in my head....it goes like this......m
My dad, god bless him, would say " if a job is worth doing then it is worth doing well". Followed by " a craftsman takes pride in his work".

Now dad is a perfectionist and actually in my career I have definitely inherited that trait. Perfectionism, doing it well, putting the time in to develop expertise etc.

However, on Arwen.........well those traits don't always materialise.........but should they?
Take the blocks I put on yesterday for holding the jib cleats at a better angle off the coaming.
They do the job.  I did use mahogany off cuts. I did give them a lick of varnish.....'lick' being the key word here.
Are they both equal dimensions......um! Possibly not but then neither are the tufnol cleats! Did I  round over the edges....yes I did. Are they securely attached......well I did my best and time will tell.

Do they look aesthetically pleasing.......well no!  They stick out and I can't quite put my finger on it but they just don't look right.  So maybe this is a matter of function over form. Maybe they will 'grow' on me over time.

What is certain is the jib sheet is now much easier to clip in and out with just a sharp downward tug. And the mahogany is from sustainable sources and that is important to me. Maybe I rushed them a little and added them as an after thought; a sort of bolt on..........maybe that is what's troubling me

Steve

Some simple adaptations

A few weeks ago, I altered the rear cleat position for the mizzen sheet. I cut a mahogany block from some old scrap timber I had lying around and angled it slightly along one face so that when offered up to the back coaming it lay slightly angled downwards. Screwed into the coaming, the cleat was added.
I have to say it works; and works well indeed. Not pretty but definitely functional. No more scrabbling around to secure the mizzen sheet; just one sharp tug downwards does the job. Wonderful.

So now I have to do the same with the jib side cleats. Now when solo sailing, I just let the jib sheets pass through the coaming hole and down to the rear of the centre case top. Here one of them passes through a huge deck loop before being tied to the other jib sheet. In this way, I never lose a jib sheet and they are easily jammed into the cleat on the aft end of the centreboard case cover.

However with crew in the boat, it has been necessary to part the sheets and the crew fumbles to try and secure it low down to their side. These new blocks should stop that from happening. However, I need to make them low profile one so that they don't dig into the crew's ribs or get accidentally knocked off the coaming by an over vigorous crew member.

I'll let you know how they turn out

Steve

Some video clips

Showing welsford navigators and various other boats at http://www.gaffrigsailinginwa.org/videos/ 

Enjoy

Steve

A short video of Saturday's trip

It has one or two errors in it.....sorry. Still trying to get used to using iPad apps such as reel director. Also, I discovered from my log it was Arwen's second sail of 2013

Anyway, hope you get some enjoyment from it

Steve

The final part

By now it was cloudy, chilly and a nasty wind was picking up. We turned to sail back down the Tamar. That fickle wind had moved due south and so it stayed all the way down the river, which happens to run almost due south.  With the tide still just easing its way in and with the wind increasing in strength, we resorted to motorssailing, with two refuelling stops on the way back down, my paranoia more than an actual need to refuel!  The river entrance proved entertaining with a nasty chop developing that cut the outboard out three times in the narrowness entrance ( heart stopping moments they call those.......thank heavens we had been motorssailing and the main was still up or on the rocks of Devil's point we surely would have been)

It was good to have a shakedown cruise. Dave, as always, was excellent and superbly experienced company. Arwen, as always, was impeccably well mannered.

Bring on the summer!
Steve

Part 4

On the eastern shore, just before the bridges, is a small boat club and it was clearly a busy day. All the boats were being returned to the water having been on the hard standing during the winter months. A large hire crane slowly swung each boat up and then down into the water whilst an army of hard hatted men motored the boats out onto the narrow trot moorings that lined the eastern bank.

Sailing under the bridges was cool. Orange overalled men swarmed over the scaffolding like an army of ants and a small boat was tied up at the base of one of the massive support pillars. Optimistically called the  'safety boat' I'm not quite sure what that boat and its one man crew were supposed to do. A piece of scaffold dropped from 150 feet will hole a boat! A man falling that height, God forbid, well........no chance really.

Clear of the bridges and we were into the huge expanse of water in the upper Tamar.  the public slip at Saltash had queues of small private fishing boats wanting to launch near to high tide at 12.30pm.  On the other bank was the jetty where the ammunition barges tie up to be loaded for the Royal Navy. The whole of the hill on the eastern side is hollowed out.......the ammunitions bunker for Devonport Dockyard!

Part 3

And my apologies. Using the iPad to post blogs has its bugs; one of which is that it doesn't like posting longer logs and the bogging screen reaches a capacity and refuses to scroll down further. Irritating and so my apologies to all.

Rounding Bull point and the two Tamar bridges hove into view. The front one is the Brunel railway bridge, over 150 years old and undergoing some repairs. It carries the main London to Penzance railway and our lifeline in the south west to the rest of the UK.  The second bridge is the road bridge linking Devon and Cornwall, which is the same age as me, 51 years old.

Part 2

We glided past devil's point where I used to go conger fishing as a teaching student. I almost lost my life there once when a rather temperamental conger I'd hooked decided attack was the best form of defence and so actually slithered up some steps to try and take chunks out of my feet at 4am one morning. With eyes the diameter of tea cup mouths and at some 7 feet long.......well you had to be there..........and it was frankly as scary as hell!

Past number one yard at the dockyard, now taken over by Stirling and son, the traditional boatbuilder whose work I admire so much, and old King Billy, the ship figurehead who has been recently given a repaint and clean and we were soon up near the ferries.

As always, crossing between the three ferries mean't switching on the motor as a safe precaution.  Timing is everything as they are chain driven ferries. You have to pick your spot, get around the back of one before either of the other two depart the shorelines. 

Passing Mt. Edgecumbe country park and the little village of Cremyll with its passenger ferry about to leave..............

The dockyards were empty, a Norwegian stealth frigate, a supply ship, a few subs. We passed close to a fuel tanker topping up the huge fuel stores on the Saltash side before sliding across the channel between the fuel barges towards Bull Point on the eastern shore, passing the new Royal Marines shore landing craft training centre. 

Going up the Tamar at long last

Finally, after what feels like an eternity, Arwen and I managed to make it out onto the water yesterday, accompanied by a very close friend Dave. And he was as glad to be out on the water as we were too!

The weather fell perfect or nearly so! A day of sunshine forecast with light winds around 5 knots from the east. As it was, clouds did close in for part of the day and the winds rose to around 12 knots making one part of the day somewhat uncomfortable.

The great thing about Dave is he's patient. Good job as it took me an hour to rig Arwen instead of my normal 35 minutes. It never ceases to amaze me how many times I forget how to rig her after a prolonged absence from the sea! In the space of 45 minutes I managed to attach the down haul the wrong way, the top boom the wrong side of the mast and two sets of parrel beads completely wrong so that they would jam on various mast cleats. Dur! But our Dave, just pottered helping assemble boomkin, rudder and various bits and pieces. A patient man is all I can say!

Once clear of the marina (a big hi to all at Queen Anne's Battery.....good to see you all again after such a long winter!), we motored into Jennycliffe Bay on the eastern side of Plymouth Sound and pointed head to wind. Surprisingly sails hoisted rapidly with only one imperfection (sail bottom wrong side of boom......again!) and off we headed with the wind behind us into the mouth of the Tamar. 

Now this is difficult to believe but this is only my second sail up the Tamar and I've never been under the bridges. Dave helmed Arwen skilfully as always, because winds were fickle. They blew from the north east around to the south and back again. Only later in the day did they start to come from a constant direction. At times he was having to pinch close to the wind in order to keep a good course. Light winds also meant at times we barely made forward progress, carried along just by the incoming neap tide. 

Intheboatshed

Intheboatshed.net is a website run by Gavin about nautical things ...old boats and maritime heritage. It is an excellent website. I notice today that Gavin has posted about a really great little website which has some lovely video clips. Access it at http://www.rescuewoodenboats.com/videos 

Gavin's website is at http://intheboatshed.net/

Steve