Picked up a nicely laid up glass hull of the Smit NEDERLAND. Spoiler alert; it won’t be the NEDERLAND.⚡

Began aligning, dry/tack fitting the Kort,stuffing box, & Kort rudder post. A rather tricky process. After soldering an oiler tube to stuffing box everything will be secured in place.

1st photo- 2” diameter steerable Kort nozzle.
2nd photo - Aligning prop shaft as parallel as possible to keel. Probably not that important to minimize prop walk on this build since it is not fast running.
3rd photo - Where I think motor/gearbox will be placed.

I always do a massing study of major components. This time it really paid off. I’m building this based on proportional measurements from a photo plus TLAR, or “that looks about right”. Applying TLAR to the house indicated the height would have been 22 ft based on my original scale calculation.NOT!!! Led me to revisit scale & properly calculate it. Scale is 1/24; not 1/48. A mystery how I blew it! Now all is good before other irreversible errors occurred.⚡

Running machinery located. Obviously not really. Indicative however of a problem I ran into.
Initial electrical setup worked. But then it was obvious that rudder operation was being lost. It finally stopped working completely. Let the trouble shooting begin.
Since I was experimenting with a high torque 270 degree servo my first thought was the problem was servo oriented. Switched to a conventional version which still didn’t work.
Hmmm. Maybe the higher voltage requirement for the high torque servo drained the TX battery. Charged the Taranis, plugged in the HT servo, no good. Same for conventional servo.
Okay, since I had tweaked the Taranis program for this particular build I deleted the build program & copied a program I knew worked perfectly for another boat. Same drill with the HT & conventional servo but still no operation.👎
Maybe an RX malfunction. Changed it & tried conventional servo. No luck. ( At this point not worth testing HT version since the conventional servo failed to respond).
Okay, the h___ with it; think it over for awhile!
Next day, a few more variations of combinations of above but only changing one thing at a time. Still nothing!
An AHA,💡, moment. The esc must be the problem even though the motor always spun flawlessly. Changed the esc, tested with a conventional servo & success!👍 Switched to the HT servo & it too worked.
All part of the fun of building.
Photo obviously not the final running gear placement. Motor placement is good.

Progress on running gear location. I’m not real happy with the long servo linkage to the rudder but if it becomes a problem I have several fixes in mind.

I’ve had another issue in the back of my mind. Given the tumblehome of the bulwarks (more significant aft than forward) it is impossible to drop a one piece deck in from above and still have a close fit at the sheer clamp/ bulwark junction.

1st photo: A template from stiff cardboard. Difficult to bend to install & terrible fit A 1/16” thick basswood sheet would probably be impossible.
2nd photo: A thin cardboard template that could slide into place between the aft bulwarks to form the deck aft of the wheel house.

Hmmm! Tried sliding aft portion of stiff template into place. Seems to be just enough give in the fwd bulwarks that a single piece deck is not out of the question.🤞

Comments, suggestions welcomed.

The midship section of this build has no bulwarks. So, I am seeking advice from the sail folks & anyone else about how to prevent leaks at the deck/sheer clamp joint. 💡💡💡💡

Thanks in advance.

Thank you LD. That is another solution should flex in the rudder linkage becomes a problem.
The servo location as installed would make a push/pull system problematical. I had to offset the position due to lack of freeboard aft. If necessary I could relocate it to the centerline. We’ll see.

Thanks for the tip Cash. That is one of the solutions, in fact the main solution, I have in mind if the rod length becomes a problem by flexing. Where were you able to find small diameter carbon fiber tube?

I knew if I let the deck fitting problem roll around in the back of my mind long enough the solution would come to me. So, by cutting the deck in half athwart ship both the stern & bow section can be slid into place on the deck beams. I decided that in reality the forward bulwarks were not sufficiently flexible to insert the bow section from above.
The photo shows where the deck is parted. It also has the access to running machinery cut out in the shape of the house base. Those beams will eventually include the coaming for the removable house. Template still needs to be tweaked for the final shape of the 1/16”” thick deck.