IOM Boxkite

A few years ago I gave an IOM to a very good friend. It was an ebay purchase and the photos turned out to be an honest picture of the condition of the boat ie basically OK but some tidying to do. At the time I did not know it was a Boxkite (Graham Bantock design) but the idea was that my friend and I could could sail with each other with me using my Topiko which is another Graham Bantock design. For those who don't know, Graham is a champion sailor and owns SailsEtc which is a go-to place for model yacht fittings, sails and accessories.



The boat had been hanging on a wall for some time and had not been sailed. With my friend in lockdown in the UK we agreed that I would raid his house and get the boat in working order. This is how it was when it came down from the shelf and apologies for the sideways photo.

It only has the A Rig (the big one) but came with the winch and steering servo. No receiver but I would have changed that anyway.

Tim R

Hi Tim,

The IOM racing boats always looked an expensive way of sailing ! I recall chatting to Kenny Binks 10 years ago at the lake at Eastbourne and asking him how much the hull & deck for his state of the art Yellow Canary from Australia was and him replying £1500 !!!! then more recently they are sailing Brit Pop's same sort of cost ??

My experience of model yacht racing with an RG65 is they take it very seriously and shout at each other alot

Where as the Thames Sailing Barge racing is much more sedate, I'm sure your restoration of your friends boat will be first rate

Regards Ray

Hello Ray

If you are sailing at International or top National level then you are going to need a recent design and it will cost a lot of money as you say. At club level it isn't so expensive as there is an active second-hand market and it is still possible to build yourself and be competitive. If you are careful you can build where you still need corrector weights and the rigs are not too expensive. Ideally you will have a carbon fin and rudder along with a long torpedo keel weight. Those cost a bit I admit.

I have a Topiko that I bought second-hand for €600. It was fully equipped and has a class certificate. If I was good enough I could get to the top group at club level with this boat. I don't have a C rig which is tiny. If it is C rig conditions I prefer to stay indoors.



I am the red boat and this was my first outing. This was the top of B rig conditions and it was very windy.



This was the second outing in much calmer conditions using the A rig. As it happens I had much bigger problems that day. The top of the mainsail came untied and a hook on the sheeting started to peel off one of the deck hatches. I nearly lost it but rushed round to the beach where it was drifting to and waded in to get it out of the surf. All my fault entirely as I thought I was properly prepared but I wasn't. Its the old saying - To finish first, first you have to finish!

My IOM is called Footloose and has had a refit too. The Graupner winch failed during bench cycling so it has not sailed yet. Really I should be fitting a RMG winch for power and reliability but they are a lot more expensive than than a Hitec winch for instance. The Boxkite has a Hitec so I am going to evaluate that before splashing out for Footloose.

Here is Footloose just out of painting. The hull was all red gelcoat before but there was some repaired damage that was showing through the gel prompting the new colours.

Anyway, back to the Boxkite.

Tim R

I checked over the hull of the Boxkite (Now named Too Easy after a Beneteau my friend owned) He wanted a modern, non serif font for the name so it was condensed to "2EZ". Suits me fine as here are less letters to cut out.

The hull was in very good shape with just some very tiny cracks at the fore and aft end of the keel slot. Internally everything was fine so I decided not to worry about them.

The main problem was the deck paint and lack of deck patches.



The paint had no adhesion and had pulled off when the patches had been removed. As you can see it was also very dusty. The sheeting wasn't rigged correctly and the mast was raked back at a crazy angle. The backstay was at its limit of adjustment so needs lengthening later.

With no time pressure I decided to see if I could tweak a few things to make the boat more competitive as the design is now quite dated, and to make it easier to operate and maintain.
The main thing that stood out immediately was that the winch was mounted forward and the battery was mounted aft. The boat design places the winch forward but it is not a good distribution of weights. On a sailing yacht it is important to keep the weight out of the ends. Also it was very inconvenient having the battery under the big aft patch which either would have to be charged in position (something I don't do if at all possible) or unstick the patch every time the battery is swapped. The steering servo was under the same patch as well so in the event of a failure, or adjustment required, off comes the deck patch again! The first decision was to move the winch aft and the steering servo forward into the centre compartment so that all the equipment is now under one hatch. The battery is now going to live in the screw top pot so swapping it out with a freshly charged one is a doddle, no patches have to be disturbed and the weight distribution is optimised. Other than that it was going to just be a tidy up - or so I hoped!

Tim R

Hi. Tim, I am using the Hitec HS-785HB with the arm in my Boxkite and that seems to be coping well so far.

I will be using the same servo but with the winch drum in the two Nimbus hulls as these boats are 3” narrower than the Boxkite.

I was going to follow the same placement of the servos as they are in the Boxkite, but after reading your points on weight distribution I will put the sail control servo as it is shown on the plans, alongside the fin box. It is already in this position in the balsa planked hull.

Regards.

Eddie.

Hi Eddie

I think it makes things a lot easier. If you use a "buggy" type battery you can fit it in a pot and have room for the RX above it. I use Ni-Mh 1600 mAh 6v batteries. It also means you can have nice short leads.

Tim R

Hi.Tim, thanks for the info.

Eddie.

The hull had been spray painted and had a good gloss. I wasn't planning a complete re-paint but when peeling off the deck paint (literally) some of the topside paint came off too.

In fact

This is how it came off leaving not a trace behind. I have no idea what the black coating was but it was quite hard and perfectly ok, or would have been if it had been prepared properly.

In the end this was the only big surprise.

Tim R

This shows the the position of the battery.

Right aft under the big patch and held don with a cable tie.

This was the original position of the steering servo.

Again under the big patch. I am not familiar with this model of servo. The sealing rubber was damaged and it was a bit noisy so I have swapped it out with a Futaba S3001. This is the design position of the servo but destined for the centre compartment. This meant making a new longer link tube but I had some allow tube that was slight larger in diameter but much thinner walled so the new one was stiffer and lighter.

Tim R

The paint coming off the hull was a shame because they sprayed finish was very good and quite a high benchmark for me to restore. Anyway we got back to to the undercoats that were sound and took out a few lumps and bumps from the inside to make things a bit tidier and a few grams of weight.



This was the result at the turning point and the hull came out at a respectable 926 grams empty. Again excuse the orientation please.

In all these kind of projects if one improves one thing it highlights another and so it was with the bow bumper. The IOM rules require 10mm of flexible material at the bow.

This was the original and far from matching the profile at the bow. It was acting more like a crumple zone than a bumper so I took it off and threw it away before I was tempted to cheat. Slippers courtesy of the local Chinese shop and very necessary on a marble floor in a Mallorquin winter.

Talking of shoes, a cheap and simple bow bumper can be cut out of a flip-flop.

Tim R