RC Sailboat & Model Sailing Guide

So you want to get started with RC sailing? What’s the dream? The hard wind and water faring Race boat captain flying along the wind with your high performance race RC Yacht. Or the armchair builder of the finest RC sailboat with all the original brass, bells and whistles watching his fancy multi-mast RC yacht sailing in to the sunset?

This quick guide will give you 2 Key Questions to get started.

Question of Purpose:Do I want something to race with the wind or a majestic boat of art?

Race RC sailboats are designed and built solely for high-speed racing. Most are extremely light, with slim hulls, long keels and tall, carbon-fiber masts. The slightest wind will send them of flying across the water and they are very responsive to rudder and sail trim. With lots of wind or while running downwind, they can be a handful. They sure are a lot of fun while speeding across the water, fighting inch for inch to beat another sailboat. But don’t expect bells and whistles and perfectly scaled image to an original.

If you are more in to a beautiful scaled remote control model sailing boats then you can choose from easily assemble able semi scale kits or build a boat from scratch. These boats are a work of art and you will find yourself changing and reworking little bits like brass fittings, a detailed rig or a teak- or mahogany-planked deck.
If you are an absolute beginner and not much of a handcraft person who likes to work on flimsy things and has patience to re-measure and rework the smallest details, than I recommend you to take a semi scale nearly ready to run kit or go for a less artful race boat. To go the full detailed way look around and you will find a large number of build plans available in shops and even for free online.

Question of Size: Or what kind of car are you driving?

All RC sailboats might look awesome on pictures on the package but once you put it together it might be a huge monster that will never fit in your car. I strongly recommend you check out the size of your trunk before you buy the boat.

As smaller sized RC sailboat with 32” – 40” might weight around 6 – 8 pounds and can fit with some arranging in to your trunk or back seat space. But a 72” model sailing boat can easily way 30 pounds and will require a pickup truck or a large van (and lots of patience packing).
An easily removable keel or mast can definitely help, so look for those features.
(See the recommended Megatech Nirvana II with a removable racing keel)

Another thing to look out for:
Also check out where you want to go sailing. If you only have a small pond with lots of seaweed then you want as little keel as possible. But if your pool of water has lots of wind then a little bit more keel is what you want.

I hope this got you started and I will soon post another article on the different features of RC Sailboats to look out for when shopping.

RC Sailboat stands for Remote Controlled Sailboat and is often also called a Model Sailboat.

RC Sailboats use the power of wind acting on their sails to propel the boat forward and are typically controlled by a radio transmitter. By manipulating the joysticks on the radio transmitter, radio signals are sent out and then received by the radio receiver on the boat. The receiver interprets the signals and controls accordingly the so called servos on the RC Sailboat. Those servos are battery powered electric motors which change the position of the rudder (steering the direction of the boat) and the position of the sails (allowing trimming the sails to the best location for the given direction the wind is blowing unto the RC Sailboat). In a very broad sense the operator can control through the radio transmitter the direction (via the rudder) and the speed (via the sails and strongly depending on the strength of wind) of the RC sailboat.

Types of RC Sailboats:

RC Sailboat Toys
These model sailboats are mainly made for kids. They are very easy to operate and usually control the sailboat only via a little propeller and not actually via the sail and rudder position. Their advantage is their simplicity and that they don’t rely on the wind (which means you don’t need to get your feet wet to get it back to shore or the edge of the pool. These RC Sailboats are good fun for the pool or a small pond. Example:

Dickie Spelzeug RC Sailboat

RC Model Sailboat
A Model sailboat or so called scaled model boat is a RC Sailboat made to the image of a particular sailboat type. Examples range from the great multi mast Schooners, Historic sailboats (see the Santa Maria) to models of the latest America cup race yachts or even a complete fantasy boat. The effort and pride of a model ship builder is to create a sailboat with the finest details matching the original boat or boat type they had in mind and make it look like a smaller version of the original. When saying “small” – these boats can be anything from a few inches to multiple feet long and include a whole range of features such as lights, sounds and even mini canon’s. There is a limitation to size vs. original measurements as RC Sailboats often have to deal with stronger winds and waves in ratio to their size compared to a full sized vessel, which can require changes to the hull, keel or the rigging of the sails.

AMYA RC Sailboat Schooners

Racing RC Sailboat
Racing RC Sailboats are made for one thing – speed. These sailboats are made from wood to high-tech material such as carbon fiber for masts. They range from just for fun RC Sailboats to specified classes defined by ISAF or individual RC Sailboat clubs. Well known classes are the International One Meter, RC Laser, Seawind or the Nirvana II. Example:

Megatech Nirvana II

RC Bottle Boat
Bottle Boats are the low cost and not so serious alternative in RC sailing. These RC Sailboats are mostly constructed from all kind of waste items such as plastic bottles for the hull and bin bags for sails.

British Model Yachting Association RC Bottleboat Race

I hope I could give you a broad understanding of what a RC Sailboat / RC Yacht is.

Go, get yourself a RC Sailboat and fly with the wind!