Ship Update: Standing Rigging Done

It's been a while since the last update - partly because it was a busy term and I couldn't work on it as much as would have like, but also because there was a lot to do in this stage. This was lengthened by adjusting some things I had already done. The forstay blocks on the bowsprit were moved so the forstays ran reasonably close to parallel (they look like hell otherwise). Also, as shown in the pictures at the bottom, I had to do some other jigging with the bowsprit rigging to leave room for a boom and sail to be added on later.



As you can see, the masts are now fully assembled and (I believe) all the standing rigging is now up. Next would be assemblying the remaining spars and sails with their associated rigging.

In an earlier post I mentioned that there was going to be an issue with attaching the bowsprit boom. The first picture on the right (from a few months ago) shows the problem with the orientation of the stays and chain under the bowsprit leaving no room for the boom. This was done as per the picture in the assembly book (which is nothing but a bunch of pictures). The second picture shows one of the solutions that came with the kit. Here they moved the blocks for the lower set of stays further aft, leaving room for the boom, but, as you can see, there is no room for the sail to hang down. The assembly book had a different solution of completely removing this set of stays, but that still means the sail is above the chain. There is no way this would work in real life. I ended up pulling out my DVD of Master and Commander (the Russell Crowe film) and scanned along until I came to a good shot of their bowsprit. The correct way now seems pretty obvious with the stays moved foward and the chain aft leaving room for the boom and sail, as shown in the last picture.
PS: I'm putting my photo collections on Flickr from now on. They have better services and I don't like how Orkut makes you sign up in order to view the pictures - sorry Google. The model pictures are now there, and the rest will soon follow.