Here is my new boat!  It is called the "Undead Monkey".  You have to see the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie for the name of the boat to make sense. 

It is designed to race in the "Footy" class.  It is just under 1ft long, and approximately 2.5ft from the bottom of the keel to the top of the mast.  She has a balsa wood planked hull covered in Fiberglass, and paint.  I started to make a scale model of a Wally boat.  I then found the footy class boats, and decided to build one.  The main draw for the footy's is the cost of them.  some of the 1 meter boats can cost upwards of $2,000.  My total cost for my footy was under $50.

Today I took her to Carbon Canyon Park in Brea, CA for her maiden sail.  I had done a little testing in the pool at Jen's place, but this was the first time the Monkey was in the wild.  I had to cancle the christneing because the Queen was busy today, and teh smallest bottel of champaign would have destroyed the boat, but I have included a picture.  The wind was good today, and the lake was nice.  They had two piers that I launched from.  The keel made it hard to come in close to the shore because of weeds in the lake.  So, I dropped her into the lake, and away she went.  I was surprised that she sailed upwind better than down wind.  I had a small issue with the rudder, so I have to fix that.  The biggest problem was the sail servo arm.  Twice the arm detached itself from the servo.  At that point I lost all control of the sails.  Luckily either through luck, design flaw, or act of god, I was able to sail the boat  back to me at the pier.  All in all, it went well.  The monkey needs to go on a diet, and the sails might need a redesign, but for a first attempt at a boat I think it went well.  I have pictures and some videos below.