Hampton Nautical Bluenose Sailboat, 17"

I received my Bluenose today and love how it looks. The colors are true to the picture and it looks great on my mantle!I'd never done this type of assembly and I would gladly do it again. It was actually fun to do! Yes, it took a bit to figure it out - it took 20 minutes give or take. Take a deep breathe and take your time! I used the photos above to find my way and applied a little common sense. I found the strings to be somewhat stretchy and forgiving. At the end of the day, it's a great value and a beautiful addition to my living space.

Just admit it guys. There is no way to rig the 17” model as it is shown in the pictures. Mine had no blocks for the Main Stay nor for the Fore Stay. I don’t know what you would call the "flying topsail" that is rigged nicely at the top corners between the Main and Fore Masts. But I’ll be darned if I can figure out a way to stay the bottom two long sheets. It somewhat looks from the pictures that they zigzagged them perhaps to make it self trimming. I don’t think that should be needed. There is nothing to foul it, it you just stayed the sheets almost anywhere. The "flying topsail” sheets are extra long, and theres no place I can see where to sensibly stay them - 2 sheets to the wind perhaps on that. I pretty much looked at it and ignored the drawings since they are useless as a previous reviewer mentioned. And I just thought how would I tack this ship into the wind when it was time to come about. The flying jibs would fill themselves with wind without trimming. The hooks provided, leave much to the imagination as to how the sails would indeed be trimmed to allow for a portside wind tack. Both the flying topsails on the main mast and the fore mast would not cooperate without some serious ingenuity by the crew. I thought the whole idea with a gaff rigged schooner was to make it easy to sail without working a crew to death. Two sheets to the wind is what I see for those sails as well. In the end, its a conversation piece no matter how you rig it. I’ll post a picture of how mine looks presently. I can’t help but want to rearrange the rigging every time I look at it. One thing I will say, whoever calculated the lengths for all of the lines did a pretty amazing job. The hooks are attached firmly, and pretty much tell you where they co just by putting a bit of tension on them, The hull is finished nicely, the deck also. And the whole thing goes together without a drop of glue. Pretty clever. I suppose what I am saying is that you can make mistakes on the rigging, and its unlikely any of your friends you got it wrong.

Great little model sailboat on several levels & reasons. ease of assembly, very good lines, lots if information gleaned from model, very pretty

Love these ship models. Finishing the sales can be challenging as the instructions are not clear. Great value for the price.

While the ship looks really nice, the Quality of the product is below what I expected especially considering the price. At least 3 of the items on the deck needed to be re-glued and some of the lamination needed to be hot-snotted down. Assembling it wasn't difficult, but it is quite fragile and will not take well to being dusted with anything more forceful than canned air. Would I buy again?.......No, not at the current price which was something like $35. Would I recommend?....Maybe (because it is a nice looking and reasonably accurate sailing ship).....but be prepared to add more work than just hooking the sails on.

Absolutely no directions on how to set the mast and rigging. Just a very faded abstract picture with no details discernable

I bought this for my 10 year old daughter to assemble hoping that she would have to place the pins herself for the rigging, hang the anchors, glue the interior and the masts, put the sails up herself... Nope. This all went together in about 5 minutes, it's 80% pre-assembled. I was so p-----d off at what a horrible gift this made. What's the point of buying a model that needs no assembly? Who is the audience for a model that is finished in 5 minutes?

Every Christmas I buy my grandson a model ship. This is one of the most beautiful ships I've ever purchased for him.