Pic 64:    An aerial view of the shipyard. Some of the standing rigging carries sails, and thinking it was easier to thread the sail mounting rings onto a free end, I made some of the 'fore and aft' sails with the help of this handy sewing machine. Practice on some spare material first though, because you will get neater and more accurate with time. Check, too, that the sail templates provided are actually the right size to fit on the yards. In this kit they were mostly OK, but a couple of sails needed to be reduced. If a sail ends up bigger than its yard, it looks silly.

Note the little bulldog clips temporarily keeping stays in place. All this rigging interacts with itself. Tighten one rope too much, and another rope goes slack. Get them all looking nice, and suddenly a mast is out of alignment. My advice is - never fix it until you have to. Between every trial fixing of a new line, scrutinise the ship from every angle to make sure the masts are still in perfect alignment. Most of the standing rigging is secured by a 'whipping', ie narrow thread wound round two pieces of rope to complete a loop. If you fix them with PVA glue and subsequently have to adjust them, you can undo them by dampening them - after a few moments they will unwind quite easily.