Hi rst
Yes the sarik model looks ok. I didn't want to make it bigger just in case it would effect the scale in looking for figures although dolls house figures are about 1/12 scale.
I suppose the handling would come down to the flat bottom aspect.
Shallow vee-bottom for my experience actually. Handling comes down to windage pretty much along the full length, very large L/B ratio but nt much draught, a relatively small power plant and prop positioned
right at the stern, for full and small-scale aike.
If I recall the wheel on the full-size boat had a notoriously ridiculous number of turns lock-to-lock. I remember the skipper (John I think) was constanty spinning it side-to-side but he could also turn the boat on a sixpence when needed if he read the wind right. I have vague memories helping a strip-down of the engine bay in the real-thing -pretty sure it was Ford 4cyl. Could it have been a "Mermaid" engine? It was almost 30 years ago now so I'm forgetting!
I used to have a licence to pilot passengers on a flat bottomed replica steam packet boat with a single cylinder lister engine. When we did our test for it myself and a friend were so familiar with it by then we could read the wind, put her in almost any position to advantage, turnon the spot, little steerage aft but we knew exactly how to take advantage of the prop-walk. We could usually berth it on a "handbrake turn" without blinking whereas allot of folk who didn't sail her regularly struggled to keep it in a straight line at best of times sometimes. That said, I did once bash it at almost full speed into some brand new very expensive sandstone capping stones at the edge of the basin one day when I couldn't get her in/out of gear and she wouldn't turn either unless on full throttle. Very embarrasing carrying passengers and hitting it with a massive BANG! Of course the gearbox and hydraulic steering came back to life as soon as I berthed it and it was all checked out! She always did have little gremlins that came out from nowhere sometimes!
