Water channeling helps reduce listing while your damage is light, but you also need to pay attention to internal hardware layout. Once you start sinking and the ship starts filling up with water, different components in the hull will displace different volumes of water, causing the ship's internal weight distribution to shift. IE if you have a watertight box on one side, that side will be less buoyant once the water level reaches the watertight box. While this can cause noticeable listing, most people are pretty good about having symmetric or almost symmetric internal layouts. Thus you usually see more of an effect on your fore-aft trim. Too much low-density stuff in the stern, and your ship will settle bow-first, keeping water away from the pump. OTOH too much low-density stuff in the bow, and your ship will sink stern-first, jamming your props and rudders into the mud and rocks of the pond bottom. Ideally you want enough buoyancy forward to ensure your ship settles stern-first, and then have something buoyant mounted just under the deck astern, so the ship actually sinks bow-first.
Over the past few weeks I have cut out the old water channeling. I had issues with water getting under the old channeling. Testing the location of the batteries so they clear the guns in the wing turret. Here is the bow cleared out. I worked on lining up the new motor mount. I cut the aluminum plate in half, and screwed it to base before I epoxy it in. I will epoxy the stuffing tube and motor mount in next, then get the rest of the water channel in. The rudder rule passed, so I will probably move the rudder post towards the stern to get the larger rudder's pivot point in a good location.
Posting spree.. I replaced the shaft last month, added Traxxas Villain gearbox. I decided to fill the area aft of the piece of balsa with filler to ease the waterchanneling job in that area. The balsa was placed to allow duel stern guns to fit infrontt, even though I probably won't use that deck again anytime soon (I have 2 stern decks with different gun placements). Sized out the rudder yesterday and moved the rudder post to accommodate the larger rudder. The boat could pivot about its midpoint prior to the rule change, so I'm hopeful for the performance with brushless and larger rudder. Planning for 1 13/16" by 2 15/32." Full coverage of prop during turn. Had to move the rudder post back, and aligned it with the shaft (which is slightly off center due to poor workmanship). I will probably move the rudder servo mount forward (towards bow, away from rudder) to allow for a larger drive sprocket for the chain rudder drive.
