Hello,
as a newbie in this forum, I would like to present myself, 40ish, living in Houston Texas since 10 years but initially French Citizen (English is not my native language, so please be patient 
). I’m a software engineer and absolutely love it, but get very frustrated not to “build” anything. Therefore I always do some manual work (renovate an old house), renovating old motorbikes, last year I started building a RC plane but it is still on going and I realized I’m scared I’m gonna go out there and trash it at the first take off, so it does not motivate me (and my result to flight simulator so far are not… great 
)
I have done a lot of windsurf and even some real size sailboat in my life and I loved it (mainly the windsurf speed), so, I came to the conclusion that I should build … a RC sailboat… hence my presence in this forum 
I’m working in support environment, therefore I’m a firm believer in Murphy’s law and I know that it is not “IF” something is gonna go wrong but rather “WHEN”…
So, after reading and researching a little, I have a few questions:
- I have seen some sailboats sinking on Youtube, why do people do no not fill them up partially with some very light foam which would guarantee that they do not think without impacting (too much) performances?
- I do not know any water area dedicated to this activity and I do not want to carry a canoe to get back my boat if anything goes wrong, therefore I think I should minimize the need for deep water and use a smaller keel as possible (which would also help for transport), any thoughts/recommendation?
- I do not really feel like buying a kit, as I really enjoy the plannig/construction part (remember the engineer part?), so I started to look at different plans, any suggestions/concerns regarding building a first time build from scratch? I’m fixing to work with wood and I’m a little afraid of the resin/epoxy work as I have never done this before?
- I’m in Texas, so Bigger is Better obviously but I still need to fit the boat in the car to drive to the sailing location, so any recommendation for the size? The way I see that it is less than one meter and you can keep it all setup for transport or more than one meter and you have to transport it “un-setup” and spend time on the spot to setup, is it a true assumption?
- Does anybody know a club around Houston, I was not able to find any
I’m sure I will have thousands of questions, already answered a few hundreds by reading this forums (first build in search is great :)…
Thanks for your patience and advice, Valentin