- always use vacuum bags when making a fiberglass hull; your boat will not be airtight without one
- test you boat in the water as soon as possible with the actual controller, not just a protoboard with a couple of potentionmeters
- make sure you're using the correct revision of the communications protocol or else you might have some surprises during checkoff
- marine epoxy is your friend (some quickset epoxies are too brittle to be used to repair the hull of the boat)
- thoroughly check the wire connections on an ESC if you get it from hobbyking.com
- old xbees can lead to very strange communication problems
- NEVER reverse the power on the xbees