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

Sunday 29 March 2015

Dinghy cruising: The pulley anchoring system

Has been bugging me. Mine didn't work quite right and I want a good set up for the summer. Anyway I bought two copies of small craft advisor magazine because I am stuck in a hotel up north (short version story...we moved my daughter and her friend into a rented apartment this weekend so they could start their internment jobs on Monday. They arrived and immediately switched on the boiler. Which caused several pipes to burst flooding walls and electrics......say nothing!!!!!!!)

Anyway in the one magazine was a lovely simple diagram set showing the set up using some pic pipe with two bends one either end, 200' of floating rope, some fishing net floats and a few carabiners. I can set it up ready prepared and then just attach it to my anchors. Hey presto, system sorted....at long last. Now all I need is some nice sailing weather.

I'm aiming for Wednesday or Thursday. Tides are building to springs and high tide early evening ish. My good friend is semi ready awaiting the where and when (it's weather dependent my friend......but Tuesday is definitely out! So Wednesday or Thursday if you don't mind wearing foulies!!)

I suspect it's a shake down cruise, first of the season, so pottering around the sound, maybe poking a nose up the Tamar into mill rook creek and St. John's lake.

We'll see what the week brings. 


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