This Christmas, I talked the wife into getting
me the ProBoat Sanibel as an upgrade to the Nirvana The Sanibel is
a fiberglass hulled 36/600 RC Yacht.
It is available from Horizon Hobby and other Horizon Hobby dealers.
I bought one through the Horizon Hobby website and received the boat
about two weeks ago. I unpacked it to determine if it had arrived
in one piece. The boat had made it to my door intact, but
there were a couple of problems with the boat itself. First, there
were some dimples in the hull beneath the rudder servo. While the
fiberglass hull finish was great, these dimples were not acceptable.
The other flaws were the poorly installed grommets in the cloth sail.
There was no washer on the spread side of the grommets and they were
basically split and probably subject to tear the sail cloth. The
boat was beautiful and probably a functional vessel, but it had one
major design flaw. The booms are permanently attached to the sail
winch control lines. When you attach the main sail boom to the lower
half of the mast, you now have booms and a mast that are permanently
attached to the hull. Now the promotional material for the boat
says easy transport by virtue of a two piece mast. I don't think
it's just me, but having to keep the mast and booms on the boat doesn't
constitute easy transport. At least one other Sanibel recipient
felt this way too and returned his Sanibel. I was really disappointed
to have to return the boat, but I was not looking forward to transporting
a boat that has to remain together or requires total disassembly to get
it to the lake. I didn't have the boat long enough to confirm
this, but I think if you cut the line and installed a clip on the sail control winch line
and made a loop on the end of the line from the boom, you might be able to disconnect the mast and
booms and transport the yacht like most.
Here is a link to the
Sanibel page at Horizon Hobby. As much as I want to vent about
the Horizon Hobby product support staff, I will refrain. If you
buy something from Horizon Hobby and want to return it, don't call
product support. Call the regular sales number and ask for
customer service.
