Had the Graupner Optimist in my basement for about 25 years some one gave the unfinished kit to me at A show club was doing at Canal Days in Port Colborne Ontario . No keel so I made one from a piece of scrap plate at work on afternoon shift took a few weeks at lunch time had to learn how to use a cutting torch & industrial grinder to shape the keel like the plans. Then for some unknown reason I put it in the basement & kind of forgot about it after I finished installing keel & all the framing I think I couldn't find a sail servo back then so I stopped the build. I found all the manuals & sails stashed away in a drawer & the sails have creases in them that may not go flat.

Here's what's going on with the Optimist. The sail servo has been installed, but the sail servo arm needs to be longer. The rudder servo also needed to be built longer. I was banished to the basement by my wife so it was difficult to install the mast as it's 5 feet 5 inches and my basement is only 6 feet high . I'm working on the floor. I have a 1 meter Soling that has the mast installed on the deck & it's always a pain to install the mast so the mast for the Optimist is inside the hull so I built a block that will take the mast & hold it in place Hope it works

I kept looking at my 1-meter soling to see how the sails on that model worked. The mainsail needs to have a rod in the sail close to the mast to hold the sail so cotter pins can be put in the sail & pins put into the mast that's done. Now, I needed to find a way to mount the mainsail boom onto the mast. found old rudder swivel. So, off to the hobby store for some 1.44mm rod & then to the hardware store for some cotter pins.I know the swivel looks a bit odd but with a little paint, it should look O/K.The last photo is cotter pin set up on the1 meter soling mast.

For the last few days haven't done much due to the crapy weather so installed the mast, main sail & boom I think it's looking like it's going to work Next Jib & I'll need to make about 8 bose's for the rigging lines. The sail is wrinkled because it's been in my sock drawer for 30 years.

Today, there was a lot of thought going into sail installation as most of the 109 parts are no longer available from Graupner, so a lot of thinking to find other ways to make the sails work & also easy to remove sails to transport the model to some nice water hole. The jib sail is tempary . I have to go to the store for some fishing line clips.

Jib sail mounted properly I did not have the parts to do the jib rigging, so I did it my way after getting some fishing line stuff. Print shows how Graupner wanted you to do it but I wasn't going to look for those parts on the internet.Still need to do the Vorstag ? and the annahen thing ? P/S I can't read German. 😀I don't know what an annahen thing is.

Got a sail servo from a fellow club member. I had to make a few modifications so the Rudder servo would fit better in the hull. I found that the Rudder rod was getting stuck on the cockpit hole, so servo arms had to be made longer.

I was using too much brainpower trying to rig the sail servo, so I went back to the way Solings are rigged. Then a light bulb went off in my brain, and I realized all the sail servo rigging on the Optimist needs to be under the deck, not on top of the deck, like the way a Soling sailboat is rigged.🤔

Haven't been working on the Optimist for a while But a lot of thinking going on because my lovely wife was cleaning up my new area that I was band too and it's beyond me while cleaning my work area decide that some wood pieces need to go in the garbage so new ones needed to be made . Good thing there was a template print of the parts I need So to save some money I have made a attempt to make new ones from some scrap wood I had laying around. Just so every one Knows I changed my Photo the other one was out of focus.