Can anyone give me some tips on how to connect a yard and boom together as I am having difficulty as they keep pulling out the only thing that has worked so far is a rubber band but that tends to move the yard and the boom together so that the boom does not stay level with the deck.

One way to rig the tack of a lateen sail...
 Tie a knot at the tack of the sail, at the forward end of the spar, carve a small notch, slice up a small piece of flexible plastic, about 1 cm round, with a hole, drilled or bored in the centre small enough that the spar can squeeze into (with a little force).
Tie a length of line near the end of the boom, a notch there will hold the knot in place. Run this line and the corner (tack) of the sail through the bit of plastic, then push in the spar, the plastic will click in place when it reaches the notch in the spar, the end of the line is then drawn through, to draw the boom and spar close together.
A stopper knot will keep the line from slipping through, if you use a length of line long enough,
you can tie it to the stem, this will prevent the sail from swinging beyond a beam reach.

hellow guys i added a seadercraft boat forum over at my pirate website www.apirateslife.net/forum so if you are interested in maritime history and sailing feel free to join us over there!

hello dudes- I am trying to build a sailboat for my tech club marine design challenge, our team needs to sail a boat no bigger than 16 inches down a test tank that is 10 feet long, 12 inches deep and 2 feet wide......the wind is provided with a standard 20inch box fan, we have been having fun with styrofoam, plastic trash bags and skewers. we got the time to about 5 sec, we need to get to about 1 sec!!! any ideas from your experetise???

I built a 36" model America's Cup sailboat in school and about every 10 years I overhaul it. I'm doing the 6th overhaul and wondering just how far back from the bow the mast should mount on the deck.

I usually just guess but there must be a naval architect out there with the smarts to whip out a text with an accepted formula. --- ok I'll do the math for you --- in 1938 we didn't have a resource like this GREAT Seadercraft web site and I want to get it right before I hand this beautiful boat over to the grandkid.