Hi Matan,

Welcome to the Forum.

Plans for many modern craft can be hard to obtain, often because builders and manufacturers treat the designs as a matter of commercial confidentiality. So while profiles and deck illustrations are readily available in promotional material, lines and body plans are not included.

Model making plans for scale craft tend to to be limited to older, traditional subjects. It might be worth contacting yacht builders directly to see if they are willing to help you. As you will have seen, most model yacht plans are intended for competitive sailing and are not based on full size prototypes.

Colin

Hello Matan

Most modern cruising yachts (Beneteau, Jeanneau, Dufour, Bavaria, Gran Soleil etc)  have developed into a shape that maximises waterline length, increases internal volume and give reasonable performance. The biggest influence on modern yacht design was the invention of marinas where the charges are based on overall length. Overhangs disappeared, beam increased and the topsides were raised to get the biggest volume in the shortest length. Thus the classic designs that we are familiar with, rapidly morphed.

Profiles and deck layouts vary a lot but underwater the shapes are surprisingly similar. As Colin said you can get a lot of information from brochures so you could easily construct a Beneteau lookalike and if you want to PM me your email address I can send you some photos of typical underwater sections.

As far as scale is concerned you will have to make changes to the keel. The most common way is to fit a deep fin with a lead bulb to lower the centre of gravity. You can keep the original hull / keel profile for display and storage purposes and fit the fin for sailing only. On the rig you can keel to scale but I find this will lead to the boat being underpowered in light conditions and overpowered in strong winds. I have a scale yacht build thread "Galileo" and the scale rig works fine for medium conditions. I have made a tall rig for light weather (about 30% taller) and if I feel inclined to go out in rough weather I will make a small rig but for the moment that is on hold.

For useful information on fin / bulb keels on scale boats you should look at the Thames Barge threads and also Ray Wood's Wild Duck.

Tim R

Edited By Tim Rowe on 01/04/2020 12:21:43

Edited By Tim Rowe on 01/04/2020 12:22:15

I think from a general modelling point-of-view a lot depends on the purpose of the model :

For instance, do you want an accurate scale model that will grace a display case, or, do you want something that will work well in its "natural environment"….water and air molecules being what they are won't 'scale' with our models !

Working models, therefore, are almost always a compromise between something that looks reasonable and something that performs well. You could say that this is the whole art of it and it applies to boats, cars, gliders and many other types of model.

I've found that a little thought up-front can save a lot of disappointment and wasted effort later on…

Happy modelling,

Dave