Didn't want to highjack the tread anymore as well, so I started a new one.
So Jake, are you able to tack the boat by remote control?
I grew up in the Caribbean making these kinds of boat from dried wood. We called them pond boats. We would spend weeks shaping it with a knife and chisel. The keel was a simple piece of galvanize that we bent one way or another depending on the wind direction and strength. Nothing as revolutionary as this. Only a few weeks ago I visited my brother in Boston and we (both in our 50s now) were reminiscing about these boats. We used to sail them mostly in the ocean (Caribbean Sea). When racing, we would follow them in small row boats, and sometimes have to jump out of the row boat, and swim to the pond boat to tack it. Sometimes we were a mile maybe half a mile offshore in 200' deep water. There was one guy (one of the richest guys in the village) who would either build his boats from plans bought from the US or Britain, and nobody could beat him. I sent to link to my brother so he could read it.
That sounds like a great time for kids - this one is a bit more tuned for grown-up lazy play...it currently has two channels of control - rudder and sails...both the main and jib sheet together but the jib is balanced on a boom so it will pop and and go wing'n'wing sailing downwind. The boat tacks very well and easily and is setup for racing around a buoy course (windward leeward).
The class rules limit the boats to four channels of control .. but if you add too much to them, it becomes harder to stay in touch with actually sailing it. My next one, however, will have three channels...the third channel will allow me to tweak the relationship between the main and the jib.
I don't have many good pictures of the keel, but if you look at this, you can see that it has a bit of righting leverage.
![[Linked Image]](http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1150/836719886_776457c177.jpg)
Here's the main winch used to control the sails
![[Linked Image]](http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2369/2319535723_f7edeb33ae.jpg)
All the photo documentation can be found here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/teamseacats/sets/72157594185325987/And there is a US1M category with a lot of build detail on the teamseacats website.