Made a mast crane based on one that I have made in the past for my Star 45's. Works well for them, and should work well for a Vintage Marblehead Sun Wind. It's made from brass, with a bar for strength soldered to the top. The idea is that a slot will be cut into the top 2" of the mast, and the crane will be through-bolted. This link is to the original schematic of a mast crane that you can build yourself, courtesy of the Miami Valley Model Yacht Club in Ohio.  Here is my updated version. Click to see the full-sized image and then copy and paste it into Word. It "should" print at just about the correct size, but you may have to adjust the image a bit. Cut it out and spray glue it to some brass sheet. Cut it out on a band-saw and then sand smooth. Be careful when working with tools and metals!! This is what I ended up with for my Sun Wind HF. I decided to reinforce the crane with a length of brass bar soldered to the top edge. Back to deck pl...

In the size of RC sailboats that I enjoy building (Star 45, my Salish 475, Vintage Marbleheads, maybe someday an East Coast 12 and others... all between 45"-60" LOA), it is tough to find rudder control arms that fit a 1/8" rudder post. It's virtually impossible. Recently I found a website that showed how they made their own. Today I tried it and it worked really well! I'm simply horrible at metal working, especially soldering, but after a few mistakes I finally got it to stick. Here are my first tries. When I finally get around to building the actual boat, I will make better ones. But this at least proves that even someone as solder-challenged as I am can do it! Click HERE to go to the website I found. They were working with 1/16" shafts, but the steps are the same for my 1/8" shafts. There is also a nice discussion on RC Groups about rudder control arms. This is another example for an RC hydroplane . Then I found someone else, and I can...