My first R/C yacht - I've owned it for 4 years now. The kit is a very straightforward build, which was lucky since I had never built one nor even looked inside of one before.
Instructions: plenty of drawings to assist the novice. I might have been thrown off by the use of non-nautical terms, but they'll probably work fine for a novice.
The hull is one piece of blow-molded plastic and is fine - no problems. The hatch is a piece of styrene, I think, that slips into a glued-on track. The radio box is several pieces of lite ply that are assembled and glued into the hull. All interior work is done through hatch. The hull assembled with no problems, though I worried too much about servo placement. The default locations work just fine. The rudder and post assembly install easily, as does the keel/bulb assembly.
The rig is formed of a 2-piece aluminum mast (with a plastic joiner) and aluminum jib and mainsail booms. Again, there were no problems assembling these to the instructions. The sails are flat panels of pre-printed material - more on these later.
I used a Futaba 2-channel radio with S25 sail servo, which provides enough power to pull the sails in all conditions.
Sailing: The boat sails well - very responsive to rudder inputs without being stupidly sensitive, though this is more a reflection of servo-holes used than anything else. It displays a tendency to nosedive when being pushed hard - sealing the hatch (I use electrical tape) is a must. All in all, a good first boat, and there is a very active class association. Tons of information (both first-time builder/sailors and racing modifications) can be found at:
www.victoriarc.org.
Hits: General boat design, sailing characteristics and ease of assembly.
Misses: Sails (they're terrible, but I used them for a year before replacing them). Sail arm - mine bent under stress, making me think that the sail servo wasn't doing its job. It turned out that, after reducing the rig-friction with different line (Spyderwire) and installing a couple split-rings at strategic points, that the arm was almost strong enough for general use. I ended up replacing mine with a metal piece later on. More in the Vic mods post following this one.