A600: Final Assembly

Final Assembly

Once the servo tray is installed, the hull and deck assembled, and the mast and boom are done, you're almost finished. One enhancement I made was to drill a hole in a 1/4" nylon bolt and slide it down the sail control line ("sheet") to plug the metal supporting tube for the crewman. This acts as a fairlead for the line exiting the tube and may keep some water from coming in. (Sounds good, anyhow!)

At this point you may want to finish painting your crewman. It'll be a lot harder after he's on board, and he can't be readily detached again.

I gave him a base coat of yellow spray paint and then used model paints to put on the details of his face and life preserver. Once he's dry, he's attached to the pivoting assembly on deck. As the instructions say, you will need to push down the grommet on the pivot tube to lever his rear end above the deck. You'll have to glue the grommet in place to keep his weight from moving it back.

I couldn't bear to put a blank hatch over the servos, so I found a clear piece of plastic. I also attached it with double-sided tape ("carpet tape") instead of a bead of silicone. I'm not enough of a sailor to know if water will loosen the tape over time or not.

For a battery, I used a 1650mAH NiMH 5-cell pack I had purchased for another boat. I picked this capacity because the next size up was a lot more expensive. It does fine on the other boat, so maybe it'll be good enough here too.

Initial "sea trials" showed the bow to be angled upwards, but a re-examination of the photos on the Aquataur website show a similar tilt, so maybe this is as intended.

Pat says "The boat will be up in the bow when the crew is sitting in the stern.When winched out fully the weight moves forward and the boat will become more level."

A modification

I did notice one problem I felt needed fixing. The sailor's bun scraped across the rear hatch, regardless of how I adjusted the grommet at the front of his support assembly. On close inspection I noticed that the rear crosswise support member was bending under the weight of the sailor.

I fixed this by epoxying a short wooden prop midway under the support. I'm also thinking of placing a crosswise plank across the boat under the sailor when the boat is in storage to reduce stress on this piece.

Pat at Aquataur responds:

The weight on the crewman was increased just prior to you receiving your boat and yes I also found that the plastic rack sunk under his weight and as you will see from the attached photo, the boat now has a support

Here's the photo he attached:

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