After a lot of careful thought, planning and ingenuity I managed to get all the electrics installed fairly neatly - well at least I hope you think so!! After a lot of searching on the internet I found the perfect set of clear plastic boxes. These boxes contain 2 x ESC's, W-Tail Mixer and connections for 2x motors and 1 x rudder and the receiver plus connections to the NICAM battery. The battery and plastic boxes are fastened in place with velcro.
Now that I have completed the electrics installation, I can now carry on with the installation of the remaining stantions. I didn't want to do that earlier as it could have interfered with access to the hold. Doing the wooden stantions was a bit tricky - having to drill 0.7mm holes to accept brass nails. The commodore from the boat club drilled the holes top and bottom on each stantion with a table mounted mini drill, but I did the deck rail and the handrail with a USB drill which new only cost £8.50 off eBay. Great little drill! I first fastened the toe-rail and handrail together on the deck with yellow masking tape to make sure all the holes lined up. Then used superglue to fix them in place - which I had to do quickly by lining up the whole handrail, before the glue 'went off'.
Hopefully I'm now well on the way to completion !😊😊

After our Guide Dog puppy had finished having fun cooling off in a pet pool, I took the opportunity to have the first floating test of the motor sailor Bruma
All the radio gear, battery, motors, servo and winch were in place and I was very pleased with how she floated level. Pool is not deep enough to test with the detachable keel attached. That will be for another time. Initially I will just sail as a motor sailor and then try with sails on. Still lots to do before ready for maiden voyage! 😊

Just a bit of an update. Basically I think that all that is left now is the standing and running rigging to complete. Because I plan to eventually in stage 2 have it with sails, I have had to consider strengthening everything. I have purchased 2 purpose made goosenecks which I have slightly modified so that the swivel doesn't easily pop out of its socket. In order to lock it in I have attached a cut down winch which was in the kit. The smallest gooseneck was for a 10mm mast and these masts are 8mm. Therefore I used the brass in the kit which was for you to make a gooseneck as a filler to bring the mast diameter up to 10mm. I have also bought replacement 15.3mm dummy bottlescrews from Mantuamodels.co.uk. Unfortunately they come in packs of 10 and I needed 12 - so hence 2 packs! The eyes on these are much bigger, so threading the rigging through will be much easier! All the eyelets I've soldered the ends so they won't uncurl under strain and glued them in with the original slow setting Araldite. I've been informed by another model boat builder that the fast setting 5min Araldite goes soft in water so I thought I wouldn't take any chances! I will have to think carefully about the rigging and extra fittings as I don't want jib sheet and mainsheet getting caught on something like the horn and search light etc. Hopefully in the next few weeks I will be able to show some photos and video of it run under motors. Roy can you please give me some ideas on how to make some test sails for the model please? Also Roy, I hope seeing these last stages will inspire you to start this model which I believe you have on your shelf!
Hopefully all rigging will be done by the end of this week as I'm helping my grandson in building his first model boat which is a HA Kits Flying Christine II. It is a model of the St. John's Ambulance boat that was used to ferry patients from the island of Guernsey for medical treatment to the mainland. He is coming to stay with us next weekend for 10days and we are hoping to have it completed in that time! I will do a build blog with him - so I hope you will all follow this build as well!😊

After 2 years of on and off work Bruma is ready for the maiden voyage! In my excitement I unfortunately I forgot to attach the mainsheet to the boom!
Having it as a sailing vessel is in phase 2 - I have bought some ripstop white sail cloth to make some test sails. The detachable keel has been made and for a this trial test I'm attaching a 900gram fish shaped fishing weight.
We christened the boat with a small bottle of fizz. When I have some time I will edit the video taken and post it on here. For now here are some stills - one looks like she is just leaving a harbour wall! Pity that the duck brings us back to reality!!