The Sea Queen is an original Aerokits kit from the early 1960's. it was built by my Dad in the early 1960's. it was originally fitted with an ED Seaotter, next it had a Channel island Special, then a 15cc Gannett and finally fitted with the OS 80 which it still has fitted today.
I sail at King Lear Lake at Watermead County Park in Wanlip Leicestershire. it sat in my attic for 22 years and 2 years ago I dragged it out and gave it a bit of TLC and started to use it again and it has been ran most weekends for the last 2 years.
I ran this boat virtually all day of the Burton Model Boat Club's Fireboat day in September 2006. it is currently in dry dock having a full de-barnacle and repaint.
The hull of this model was my own design in 2004 and was sailed for 2 years, and then a new upper decks and battery system were added during the winter of 2005. The hull performed well enough but my original cabin design was too crude to keep.
The boat shown here depicts my effort to copy a 1958 ChrisCraft Cabin Cruiser at a scale of 1" = 1'.
The hull is 1/8" thick pine planks on frames with hand cut Walnut decking and 3/16" Walnut cabin sides. No epoxy or glass was used on the hull - just a good paint job.
The big change was to replace a bulky & heavy 12VDC leac acid battery with 9 AA dry cells connected in series. Bathtub testing indicated I could expect about 2 hours running time at full speed and that estimate was about right. A Dumas 12VDC motor and mechanical speed control were used with a JR XR 2 control.
The reduction in battery weight made a very large speed and appearance difference. Availability of the AA cells was an economic plus.
"BOO BOO Kitty" is a scale model of a Crosby designed Cape Cod Cat Boat.[USA] it was built from scratch at a scale of 9.04" = 1"; the model being 26.5" oal.
The dimensions were taken from a book that highly detailed the building of a real Cat Boat.
The hull is plank-on-frame with epoxy and glass cloth as the final surface. A separate and detachable fin keel was used for sailing of the centerboard model.
Radio controls were a Hitec sail winch [HS-785HB] and one servo for the rudder with a 2 channel JR transmitter.
Copying the book plans, scaling them down, and construction took up the winter of 2006/2007. The model is sailing better than anticipated on a local lake in Langhorne, Pennsylvania.
This boat is a cabin cruiser. it is powered by 2 dumas 12 volt motors, one motor fried. This boat minus elecs and motors is for sale at 75.00 plus shipping.
Had it in water this year about 1 month ago. This boat you will not find anymore. The plans are included with it.
John called this model "Nancy Dancer". it started of with plans from 'Nexus Plans Service' for Vic Smeed's 'Vivacity'. John used the hull only plans and created everything else himself. it ended up LOA 49" with a beam of 17". With the 12VDC battery the weight came to 23 1/2#.
Because of his basic 'Sedan Cruiser' he designed all the mechanicals and electricals beneath the main cabin floor, including the battery. There was quite a bit of detail put into the main cabin - unfortunately not shown in the photos - including a galley, eating area, furniture and the helmsman's station. The scale is 1" = 1ft.
This hull is plank on frame using 1/8" pine planks. Below the waterline there's epoxy & glass and above there is just epoxy. All the brightwork, cabin housing & decks is natural Cherry with a clear urethane finish.
The power is a Dumas 12VDC motor with a mechanical speed control. The bottom photo shows that he added a 2:1 gearbox to the motor and ran it in reverse to increase the prop RPMs. He also included a constant running fan to cool the motor due to the confinement of the space.
The single propellor is 2" - 2 pitch - 3 bladed bronze. As on all his models he used a 2 channel JR XR2 75 mhz.
These pictures are of a scale model of Captain Joshua Slocum's "Spray". it was sailed around the world, singlehanded between 1895-1898. Slocum re-built a Delaware oysterman hull in Fairhaven, MA and had been a gift to him.
After reading of his exploits in an original copy of his book, 'Sailing Alone Around The World' 1899 The Century Co., John copied the drawings that were in the book, established a scale for each and then converted those scales to just one - 1"=14.6" and proceeded to make a model of the famous boat. At that time [2003-2004] there was a commercial kit available but after much research John concluded that he had enough information from the book to build his own version. Actually the available kit contained some mis-information about the boat and that settled the matter.
The model was built plank-on-frame and then covered with epoxy/glass since it was intended for RC. He sailed her during the summer of 2004 and was quite pleased with her performance. An opportunity to sell the model came to him and he did so in January 2005.
If I may suggest, a 21 size engine will be far too small and you'll be disappointed if you want it to plane, you would need something more like a 52 or even a 61 for a 46" hull. Moreover with the monotonous high pitch whine they'd also sound and therefore look pretty un-realistic. With an abundance of highly efficient brushed or brushless electric motors now on the market, electric is really now the way to go. Although initially electric propulsion is a bit more expensive to set up than I.C. electric motors are now equally as powerful as I.C.,if not more so, and there is a size to suit practically any model. They are also extremely reliable and convenient and due to environmental issues you are going to have a far greater choice of sailing locations to choose from and with the bonus that your model will always stay clean!
