I hope I may be forgiven if I offer a small, but potentially important, suggestion for painting this kit's hull. There's nothing original about this suggestion; it has to do with a molded-in feature that isn't mentioned in the instructions. Well, at least it wasn't mentioned in the English "translation" that used to be supplied with the kit. I don't know about the French or Japanese versions. (That English-language document, which apparently was written by somebody who neither knew how to read French nor had attempted to build the model, was a genuine scandal. I've ranted about it several times in other Forum threads.)
As is explained on the "modeler's section" of the ship's website, those black and yellow ochre stripes that are so characteristic of the ship are surpisingly subtle in their layout. They don't follow the lines of the gunports - or any other three-dimensional feature. They sweep gently upward at the bow and stern, and taper slightly at the ends.
Laying them out and painting them in just the right places, and making the port and starboard ones identical, would be quite a challenge. Fortunately, though, the nice folks at Heller made it relatively easy - for those who are in on the secret. If you look carefully you'll see a series of extremely fine raised lines that delineate the stripes. It's easy to miss them among the detail of the "wood grain" and the edges of the planks, but they're there. Lay your masking tape along those lines and you'll be in good shape. Sand them off and you'll have your work cut out for you.
Speaking of the planking detail - I think it's worth noting that Heller did a superb job with the layout of the hull planks. So far as I know, every wood Victory kit - even the big, generally excellent one from Calder/Jotika - ignores the "anchor stock" pattern of the wales. Heller got it just right. (Unfortunately the same can't be said about the deck planks.)
Some people think the "wood grain" effect is overdone; I guess I agree, but it's a lot better than that in any other Heller kit. Others think the gaps between the planks are too prominent. They probably are, but in my opinion the problem is not that they're too wide, but rather that they're too deep.
Here's another place where the ship's appearance today isn't really relevant. The people who applied the hull planks that are there now didn't pay much attention to eighteenth-century practice. (The aforementioned book by Messrs. McKay and McGowen makes the reason obvious: the maintenance of that ship is so staggeringly expensive that corners have to be cut here and there.) In the eighteenth century, it was customary to cut the edges of the planks on a slight bevel, so there was in fact a gap of as much as an inch between the planks on their outer surface. Then the caulker, a highly-skilled professional, would come along and fill the gaps with a mixture of hot caulking compound and oakum, which he pounded into the gaps with his caulking irons. The idea was that the caulking process would render the joints watertight (or nearly so) when the planks worked back and forth in the seaway.
The Heller renditions of the gaps probably are a little too wide, but I'd be interested to see what would happen if the gaps were simply filled up, almost to the level of the adjoining planks, with some sort of filler. (Even white glue might work - depending on the type of paint being applied over it.) My inclination would be to try to make the seams barely visible in terms of depth, but I don't think their width is a major problem.
Big caveat: I haven't built this kit, and my opinions of it are based almost entirely on photos of it and my recollection of the sample that was sent to me for review those many years ago. But Bondoman's photos certainly match my recollections.