Took the Salish 475 to the Seattle Model Boat Pond last weekend. Not much wind, but lovely day for November in Seattle. Peace!

Took the Salish 475 out for a sail this past weekend. Packed it onto our 1955 22' Chris Craft Continental and took it to Husky Stadium near the UW in Seattle. Great weather, but typically for Seattle, very little wind. Wonderful afternoon! By the way, here's what our Chris Craft sounds like ! Aloha!

Here are the other boats I've built in the past few years: 1. A Tippecanoe T37 . These are kits available from Tippecanoe Boats in Washington State. 2. A classic, wooden, Star 45 . It has been officially measured and is class legal. The Star 45 is a pretty, classy, builders boat that has withstood the test of time.   3. A Salish 475 . It's my own variation on the Star 45. It was built from the same laser cut frames as the Star with a number of modifications aft of frame 6. It is an update of the classic look and was an attempt to mimic a modern ocean racing yacht. I've also built four Pygmy kayaks and many other projects. It's all fun... right?! Aloha! Radio controlled sailboats

If you are interested in building your own wooden radio control sailboat, then you might consider trying a Star 45 . A couple years ago I wrote a construction manual for how to build one. The manual is 100 pages and walks you through the entire project. The project uses the available-for-purchase laser cut frames for the Star 45. From there you create the boat you want. It's great fun and you'll end up with a fantastic boat! The manual could probably be adopted to construct other classes of R/C sailboats too, but that would depend on the class and on your skills. Keep in mind that this manual is for building a wooden boat with a fiberglass covering. It's not for building a fiberglass mold. I made a one-off variant of the Star 45 that I call the Salish 475. You can read about it on the blog. It looks more like an ocean going racing yacht than the classic Star 45.  Email me for information. The PDF version is $20 and will be emailed to you. For a printed version (

Well I just hit the R/C Sailboat jackpot! Rod Carr, of Carr Sails in Redmond, WA, and the second ever member of the AMYA, just gifted me a Marblehead "Rip Tide" hull and many of the parts and templates to finish it! Thank you Rod! I'm not sure when I'll be able to work on this, but hopefully it will turn into a fantastic vintage Marblehead. The gentleman who started it did a fantastic job. He was a true artist and I will do my best to get as close as I can to his workmanship but it will be a challenge. Here are some pictures... He even cast his own bulb and the mold came with the hull! I could probably start making my own fleet of Rip Tides as he also gave me many of the templates and such. I will only need to pin and epoxy the bulb to the fin and fair it smooth. It will be easy to do. The frames look and feel like he hand cut them on a scroll saw, but they are very close to perfect. He used thicker plywood than I may have but they are very sturdy. The

Up to now I've been running a separate build blog for a Tippecanoe T37 that I built about three years ago but have now sold. And then another blog for my Star 45 and new Salish 475 boats . So now I've decided to simply make one generic RC Sailboat blog for any future projects. Those two blogs will no longer be posted to unless something very specific to them needs to be posted. ------------------------ Next project: Completion of a vintage Marblehead "Rip Tide" donated to me by Rod Carr ! The hull was largely completed, but nothing else is. I've just ordered the plans too. I'll need to meditate on this build for a long time (at least a year) and figure out how to approach the build. In the meantime, please check out this guy who builds gorgeous Rip Tide RC sailboats!   More later! Peace!