tippecanoe sailboats

T50 Racing Sloop

The T50 Racing Sloop is the ultimate in RC sailing. Built exclusively for speed and performance, her 50 inch hull is the perfect combination of slender beauty linked with the power of a six foot mast and 1200 square inches of sail area. 

The T50 Racing Sloop is elegant and sophisticated, with a planked cedar strip hull that gleams both on the water and on display. While the assembly of the T50 Racing Sloop is more involved than the process for the T27 and T37 Racing Sloops, the T50 Racing Sloop’s detailed instructions guide the builder through the entire process.

The planked deck is really quite easy and fun to build. However, if you would prefer to expedite the building process, the T50 Racing Sloop is also sold with a molded carbon fiber hull instead of a planked wood one.

The kit includes:

• Beautiful old-growth tight-grain clear western red cedar planking strips
• All the supplies, including strongback, tape, and dressmaker’s pins, for planking the hull
• Precut okume mahogany three-ply deck and mahogany transom
• High-quality brass and stainless steel hardware
• High-tech stainless steel wire and Spectra rigging lines
• Carbon fiber mast and booms
• 3/4 oz. nylon spinnaker cloth pre-sewn sails
• Marine-grade epoxy, along with epoxy brushes and syringes
• Full radio control gear, including the transmitter, receiver, and battery box
• Sail and rudder servos, including the strong 785 drum winch servo
• Detailed instructions to guide you through the entire building process
• … and more!

T50 Racing Sloop Kit – with 3/4 oz. nylon spinnaker-cloth sails: $865.00

T50 racing sloop kit – with paneled mylar sails: $1,035.00, t50 racing sloop kit – with paneled mylar sails and 3/4 oz. nylon spinnaker-cloth sails: $1,150.00, t50 lakeside/floor stand: $56.00, t50 wall-hanging stand: $45.00, t50 finished , ready to sail..

Please call 1-360-966-3457 for availability of finished boats.

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Exploring Tippecanoe Model Boats: Quality Designs for a Realistic Sailing Experience

• By - Kyle Hilson
• Posted on November 14, 2023 November 14, 2023
• Posted in RC Boats

Tippecanoe Model Boats are highly regarded for their quality, attention to detail, and realistic sailing experience. Founded in 1985 by Tom Gorden, an avid sailor, the company has been crafting model boats that mirror the elegance and grace of full-sized sailing vessels. The brand specializes in a range of model boats, including schooners, sloops, yawls, and ketches, each designed with unique features to provide a one-of-a-kind sailing experience. The attention to detail is exceptional, with each component carefully crafted to replicate the original boat’s appearance as closely as possible. A combination of high-quality materials such as laminated wood, brass, and stainless steel, along with precision woodworking techniques, ensures that every boat is built to exacting standards. The sailing experience with a Tippecanoe model boat is both realistic and enjoyable, allowing model boat enthusiasts and sailors alike to embrace their passion for sailing on a smaller scale.

Types of Tippecanoe Model Boats

Tippecanoe Model Boats are available in a range of distinct boat types, with each bringing a unique sailing experience. Here are some of the boat types available from this brand:

• Schooners: These model boats are known for their fore-and-aft sails and classic design that evoke a romantic era of seafaring.
• Sloops: Sloops feature a single headsail and a mainsail configuration, making them maneuverable and immensely popular.
• Yawls: Yawls utilize two sails in a similar fashion, with their smaller mizzen sail providing increased stability in high winds.
• Ketches: Ketches have the greatest level of flexibility with their two fore-and-aft rigs, allowing them to handle a range of wind and weather conditions with ease.

Regardless of the model you choose, the high-quality construction and attention to detail ensure that you have an exceptional model boat sailing experience. If you’re interested in purchasing a Tippecanoe Model Boat , their official website offers an extensive catalog with a range of models available. Additionally, various online stores cater to model boat enthusiasts, including Amazon and Modelers Central .

Tippecanoe Model Boats are renowned for their exceptional quality and attention to detail in construction. Here are some of the materials used to build model boats by Tippecanoe :

The construction process involves precision woodworking techniques , with boat frames , booms , and sails crafted to exact specifications. Meticulous attention to detail ensures that each model is faithful to the original design, ensuring an excellent model boat experience.

Tippecanoe Model Boats are also committed to providing support for their customers, with an extensive range of spare parts available on their official website. Additionally, they offer a comprehensive range of after-sales support, including videos on how to fix and maintain your model boat .

For more information on their products, visit the Tippecanoe Model Boats website.

What were early sailboats made of?

Early sailboats were made of various materials like animal skins, woven reeds, and wood. For example, the ancient Egyptians used woven reeds to build their boats while the Phoenicians used cedar wood. Wooden planks were also used to build sailboats later on. Today, sailboats are made of materials like fiberglass, carbon fiber, and aluminum. For more information about sailboats, you can visit websites like Sail Magazine or SailWorld.

Sailing Experience with Tippecanoe Model Boats

Sailing a Tippecanoe model boat provides a unique and rewarding experience for hobbyists and sailing enthusiasts alike. Here are some of the benefits of sailing a Tippecanoe model boat :

• Realistic sailing experience: Tippecanoe model boats sail just like their full-sized counterparts, including accurate speed and responsiveness to wind and water conditions.
• Educational value: Sailing a model boat can provide valuable lessons in physics and engineering, particularly in regards to sail trimming and hull design.
• Relaxation: Sailing a model boat can be a soothing and peaceful hobby, promoting mindfulness and relaxation.

However, there are also some crucial factors to keep in mind when sailing a model boat, including:

• Wind conditions: Model boats can be sensitive to even slight wind changes, so it’s essential to choose a calm day to sail them.
• Water conditions: Similarly, water conditions can affect the performance of the model boat, so choosing a quiet lake or pond is recommended.
• Maintenance: Regular maintenance is necessary for a model boat to ensure that it remains seaworthy and in good working condition.

Overall, the experience of sailing a Tippecanoe model boat is a unique and educational one that is sure to provide hours of enjoyment and relaxation. Tippecanoe also offers extensive support through their official website, which includes detailed videos on how to sail the different types of models and beginner’s guide to sailing.

What is the most common sailboat model?

The most common sailboat model depends on the region and intended use. However, some of the most popular sailboat models globally are:

• The Laser, a one-design racing dinghy.
• The Catalina 22, a popular trailerable cruiser.
• The Sunfish, a small and easy-to-sail dinghy.
• The J/24, a racing keelboat.

You can find information on these and other sailboat models on websites such as sailboatdata.com or sailingworld.com. If you are interested in purchasing a sailboat, websites such as sailboatlistings.com and yachtworld.com are great resources.

Maintenance of Tippecanoe Model Boats

Proper maintenance is crucial to keep your Tippecanoe model boat in good condition and extend its lifespan. Here are some tips on how to maintain your boat:

• Cleaning : Regular cleaning is necessary to remove any dirt or debris that may accumulate on the boat. Use a soft-bristled brush and mild soap to clean it, and dry it thoroughly afterwards to prevent water damage.
• Oiling : To maintain the wood and prevent it from drying out, apply a coat of oil to the boat periodically. Tung oil or teak oil are recommended for Tippecanoe model boats.
• Inspection : Regularly inspect your boat’s components, such as the rigging and the sail, to ensure that they are in good working condition and to catch any issues early on.

Tippecanoe also offers extensive customer support through their website, including a comprehensive FAQ section and a helpline to assist with any issues that may arise. Additionally, they provide specialty products for maintenance such as the Tippecanoe Boat and Tackle Kit, which includes a range of components for repairing and tuning the boat.

By following these maintenance tips and tapping into the available resources provided by Tippecanoe Model Boats , you can ensure that your boat stays in top shape and continues to provide a realistic sailing experience for years to come.

What is the maintenance on a sailboat?

Maintaining a sailboat involves regular and thorough upkeep to ensure its longevity and safety. Here are some common maintenance tasks:

• Washing the boat regularly using boat soap and a soft brush to remove dirt and salt buildup
• Inspecting and replacing running rigging such as ropes and lines that show signs of wear and tear
• Checking and replacing standing rigging, including the mast, shrouds, and stays, as necessary
• Performing regular engine maintenance, including oil changes and fuel filter replacement
• Checking and replacing the boat’s bottom paint to prevent corrosion and barnacle growth
• Checking the boat’s electrical system for any loose connections or damaged wires
• Checking the safety equipment on the boat, including life jackets and fire extinguishers, and ensuring they are up to date and functioning properly

It’s important to follow the manufacturer’s guidelines for maintenance tasks and to address any issues promptly to avoid costly repairs. For more information on sailboat maintenance, check out websites such as Sailnet, Sail Magazine or Practical Sailor.

Tippecanoe Model Boats are the ideal choice for model boat enthusiasts looking for realistic sailing experiences with high-quality, well-constructed boats. The company’s range of boat types, attention to detail, and use of quality materials make Tippecanoe boats stand out from their competitors.

In addition to offering valuable resources such as customer support and maintenance products, Tippecanoe Model Boats also provides customers with the opportunity to customize their boats to their specific preferences and needs.

For those looking to further their model boat experience, Tippecanoe also provides an extensive line of accessories such as sails, rigging, and controls to enhance the sailing experience. With exceptional attention to detail and a passion for sailing, Tippecanoe Model Boats are a great choice for those looking for a high-quality model boat.

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A New Era in Performance Wooden Model Sailing Yachts

Introducing the t52 racing yacht by tippecanoe boats.

T52 Radio Control Model Sailboat: Kit includes all of the RC Gear with powerful drum winch sail control. Everything is included in the kit for building and sailing your Radio Controlled T52 Model Yacht except for paint, varnish and batteries. The extremely clear instruction manual is full of pictures and guides you through the building process step by step. We are well known for our instruction manuals being clear and easy to follow which makes the building of any of our radio control model sailboats easy and fun! All of the parts are precut to an accuracy of 1000th of an inch. The hardware parts are all solid brass or high grade, non magnetic, marine grade 316 stainless steel. This is a beautiful yacht that will be the most impressive rc model sailing yacht on almost any lake. The T52 is remarkably fast and powerful. It is very maneuverable and sails beautifully in winds from the very lightest breezes up to winds over 20 mph.

At 52 inches long and 6.5 feet tall overall, this is one of the very finest RC model sailing yachts available today! Tippecanoe Quality - built to last a lifetime!

Kit $560.00

Finished $2100.00 (Please call for availability of finished boats.)

Table Stand: $35.50

Wall-Hanging Stand: $29.00

T52 Racing Sloop - Big and powerful, Fast and Fun!

Students Build and Sail a Radio-Controlled Model Sailboat

This first story is from Captain David Bill, Nautical Sciences Teacher at Tabor Academy in Marion, Massachusetts. Since 2008 Tabor has offered students a boat design and building course using radio-controlled, or R/C wooden sailboat kits. It has proven to be one of the most popular courses in the school (there is always a waiting list) because it satisfies a hidden need among today’s students raised in a digital world: The need to make something using their own hands and skills. In the process, they learn valuable lessons in math, chemistry, physics, problem-solving, teamwork and leadership. Some students even incorporate lessons in graphic arts into their projects.

by Captain David Bill

Edited by dan walker, national sailing hall of fame.

Radio-controlled sailboat models are not just fun to sail and build; they also serve as excellent hands-on teaching tools for several different lessons in maritime skills, math and physics… even in art!

Tabor Academy is a co-ed boarding and day school located on the water in Marion, Massachusetts. As the “school by the sea,” Tabor sustains a unique maritime heritage that embodies in all its programs the qualities that a seagoing life requires: Thoughtful preparation for and awareness of the wider world, perseverance, courage, good humor, a sense of direction, and humility.

A number of years ago at Tabor we decided to change our traditional year-long Marine Architecture class into a one semester class which allowed for more flexible student scheduling for this nautical science elective. This new class, which we call “Practical Ship and Boat Design,” includes teaching sailing theory, boat building, parts of the boat vocabulary, rigging, boat design and many other applications. Math, physics and other lessons easily work their way into the lessons learned from this class.

Building and sailing the model allows for numerous teaching moments and building real life skills. In our digital world, young people have an unconscious desire and need to learn hands-on skills, even skills as simple as constructing a wooden hull using two-part epoxy, or learning to wire controllers and configuring the running rigging of their boats. Many of our students have never sailed a boat before, and now here they are — masters of their own first command!

Concepts Learned – Math, Chemistry, Physics, Leadership, and Art!

After the boats are sailing, navigation concepts can pull in both the math and physics, as the students work to explore concepts of distance, rate and time, speed over ground, velocity made good, etc.

Since Tabor is a private boarding school, we are more free than most schools to develop our own standards and how they are applied. That doesn’t mean, however, that this class could not easily comply in with typical core curriculum standards found in most public schools. Given a motivated teacher and some thinking outside the box, there are many “tests” along the way in the building process:

Engineering: Did your epoxied pieces set up properly? If not, reasons why and what can be done to repair?

Architectural Design: Is your keel shaped for best hydrodynamic flow? Is your hull symmetrical or is there twist along the longitudinal axis? How will that impact your boat’s speed?

Leadership skills: If the boat is a group project, team leaders could be assigned for each step of the process, and encouraged to teach their part of the process to the others in their team.

Business: Extrapolate how this process would be controlled by a company in the business of building and marketing these boats?

Statistics: Given a set of performance data after several measured test sails, develop a statistical model that could be used to rate and handicap each student’s boat, then race the boats using the handicaps; are the statistics fair and consistent?

There are several sizes and types of radio-controlled sailboat kits available. In addition to cost, factor in the place where you will be having your students sail their finished boats. Places with more wind need a larger boat; I’ll talk about why later on.

We use a T27 model sailboat kit, available online from Tippecanoe Boats: https://www.modelsailboat.com or http://www.tippecanoeboats.com. The cost for the complete kit, which includes radio control equipment, sails, zinc ballast — everything except batteries and materials to paint or varnish the boat — is around $240 per boat (likely the least expensive racing boat anyone will ever own!). Tippecanoe Boats has both larger and smaller kits, ranging in cost from $49 for a T12 (a 12” boat without radio controls that can be sailed with a light line and fishing reel (for retrieval purposes) all the way up to the T65, weighing in at almost 5-1/2 feet long, 12 pounds of weight and costing $895 each. They even have a trimaran and a US Venom One-Metre class racer, which has a carbon fiber hull! Enough day-dreaming…

Other companies also make wooden model sailboat kits:

• Chesapeake Light Craft ( http://www.clcboats.com/shop/boats/wooden-sailboat-kits/independence-remote-control-sail-boat.html ) sells a 48-inch long wooden Independence R/C boat kit for $199 for the wood parts, plus costs for epoxy and wire kits. You will still need to source the sail material —  rip-stop nylon makes a good model sailboat sail, and is readily available from fabric store chains like Jo-Ann Fabrics.
• Another potential source for both boats and advice is the American Model Yachting Association: https://www.theamya.org. Radio-controlled model yacht racing has several one-design classes, and the competition can get as serious as the big boys, with yacht prices to match… even for a model! That said, every class of boat has a low-cost entry point, and model sailboats are no exception. Google “wooden model sailboat kits that sail” or “DIY model sailboat kits” – I’ve seen model kits available for as low as $29.
• If you are more creative, and your school has the resources and tools to allow students to shape the wood themselves, you could encourage them to apply what you’ve taught about hull design. Let them shape their own unique hull design from blocks of balsa or other light, easily workable wood, available at hobby stores, finishing it off with keels and sailing rigs made either from pre-built rig kits or materials of your own sourcing.
• For elementary schools with “Maker Labs,” Oriental Trading sells DIY wooden sailboat kits for $19 that contains all the components to build a dozen 7.5-inch sailboats good enough for a “Rain Gutter Regatta” – that’s $1.58 per boat! For kits like these, you could use non-toxic wood glue and instead of epoxy to assemble, and fabric markers, wood markers or even crayons to decorate, making this a project even for younger grades. http://bit.ly/STEMsailing-DIYtoyboatkits

Workshop as Classroom

Students should be dressed appropriately: Have them wear clothes they don’t care about, and bring in old long-sleeve shirts that can get ruined; they can keep them at school with their boat projects. Boiler suits, shop aprons or disposable Tyvek suits could be useful — see if you can get some donated.

The Lessons

The model building period, from start to finish, spanned a time period of eight weeks, with one 40-minute class per day, five days a week. Of course, a single model built by a skilled individual could be accomplished in far less time, but the timeline for our students’ model building was governed by the school class schedule and other commitments they have in their normal school day.

All work on the boats was done in class. Nightly reading was assigned from the instruction manual so students will have a step by step understanding of what we will accomplish the following day.

An important engineering skill set involves learning how to read and follow a technical manual. By following the detailed instructions, they quickly learn these skills. And sometimes, when in the course of learning the students make mistakes, they learn another important skill: Problem-solving.

Obviously, since materials like epoxy, paint and/or varnish are used, safety procedures must be first taught and then supervised to ensure that any mistakes don’t result in a mess, or worse.

If possible, you might want to build one of the boat kits ahead of the class, so you can have firsthand knowledge of what is involved and the time that you should plan in for your students to perform the same procedures. Since it takes time for things like epoxy and paint to cure or dry, plan on either finishing a class so the boats can dry overnight, or use that time for cleanup, group discussion or introducing the next concept.

This IS Possible for Land-Locked Schools

Our students sail their boats on the waterfront that is part of our campus, but you don’t need to be near waterfront property for this to work. The beauty of radio-controlled boats is that they can be sailed on any body of water — including shallow ponds and lakes. I’ve heard that inland folks even sail their boats in indoor swimming pools utilizing fans for a wind source.

End Result: A Fleet of Sailboats!

It would be possible for teams of students to work on a single boat, treating the costs as either a “lab fee” or using PTA or school funds for the materials. I would guess in those cases that the boats would be school property.

You could display them and use the best ones as reference boats for next year’s class, hold a competition where students vie to win the boats, or offer them as a reward for students who provide additional volunteer assistance or some other good work that is “above and beyond.”

And a School Regatta!

Where your students will sail the boats should factor in to what type of boat you have the students build. Just as it is for any sailboat, a general rule is that the greater the LOA (Length Over All) of a radio-controlled model sailboat, the greater its ability to sail and manage higher velocity winds.

Conclusions

The big success of the Practical Ship and Boat Design class is because each student can build and sail their own boat. They take complete ownership of the boat, connect with the hands-on aspect of the work, and they are very proud of the finished product. Plus, the boats are VERY fun to sail.

After eight years of teaching this class, the result is that there is a waiting list to get in. Sometimes a student must wait patiently for two or even three years in order to get a spot in this class.

My students tell me that it is their most challenging class (but also favorite) because they have to think and problem solve on their own.

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