Light is faster than sound. That explains why some people appear bright until they open their mouths!

Model sailing boats are more relaxing than fast model boats or scale models so it soon became clear to me that I had to get a yacht. I really wanted something that had me sailing quickly. After looking at this boat, in my loft for 25 years, I thought it needed to be tackled in the winter evenings. I then looked at ready to go yacht kits and in most cases they would take a few weeks of evenings or more to rig. Furthermore, I started to observe them at the pond side to decide what to buy and found that some really didn’t sail that well.

Miss Polly is quite a large yacht and stood on its keel, virtually reaches the ceiling of my lounge. It has a ply, hard chine hull and metal rigged mast and stays.

In light of the amount of work to assemble any kit of substance and good sailing ability I decided to give Miss Polly a quick makeover and add extra ballast to the keel in the form of a torpedo bulb. I fitted a Hi-Tec winch, rudder servo and bought a budget 40mhz Acoms Techniplus radio set.

1100cm  long, 1700 cm high on stand

On the water - Miss Polly looks sweet but needs to be trimmed to make her sail better. I loose wind in the main sail and she isn’t so good in light winds. Experienced race modellers I have quizzed have several ideas to improve the performance and I’m sure this will make a dramatic difference. It doesn’t help that I’m a novice sailor!

What’s the best Radio Controlled model yacht kit to build?

Now that I have got hooked on yachts I need to build something that sails really well in light winds, looks great on the water and fits in my CRV 4 X 4 when fully rigged.

I like the Robbe Emerald, but fear it is too big for my car and its really quite expensive.

Metcalf Mouldings Replica Pond Yacht kit Moonbeam sails so well but I’m not a great fan of the old fashion gaff rigging, though that’s what a J Class yacht is all about. I’m sure I could maybe buy the hull and rig it differently.

Orion mouldings hulls has been recommended to me and they look to have a really sweet J Class yacht hull. I’d be interested if anyone has build one of these into a full yacht and to find out how and wether they got the sail rigging from?

Update 12th Dec 2010; I have now bought the Robbe Smaragd or Emerald

I’d love to hear from someone who knows of a good yacht. I’m not looking to do any serious racing at this time, just relaxation sailing.

Poor Sailing issue - I met with Peter of PJ Sails who very kindly offered me advice on why Miss Polly wasn’t sailing so well. Though I don’t plan to turn it into a racing yacht, it sure makes sense to get it sailing well. The primary issue is that the mast is flexing, creating a curvature which means the mainsail doesn’t hold the air - the air just blows straight off the sail. Peter is sending me parts to secure the base of the mast as a first step to reduce the flexing. I also had the base of the mainsail very taught along the boom and this wasn’t allowing it capture the wind. By just moving the rear attachment of the mainsail forward I noticed an immediate improvement in speed, almost doubling the on water performance. Update: following my meeting, I attached extra stays to the mid mast point and the sailing improvement is significant!

Sail winch performance - During the refurb I purchased the budget Hitec HS785HB Sail Winch Servo. It has a very large reel and is powered by 4 XAA batteries but it has insufficient torque. I have now bought the Graupner Regatta Eco winch and hope this will improve the performance of the sails. This will take 4.8 to 6V and I have been told by other modellers it can be run on 6 X AA batteries or 9V. The higher the volts the more toque it is likely to exert. I will see how this works once I have it installed.

Another modeller spoted the similarity with this yacht

Miss Polly, Scratch Built Model Yacht