Mermaid's Dream

I attended a sailboat race at the Starbord's Yacht Club in Hollywood, and after watching the races, I was hooked. I just had to get a Flying Tako, which is said to be one of the best sailboats in SL. At L$250, it was a bargan. They were for sale (I resisted the urge to spell that "sail" there you'll be glad to hear) at the dock, so I splurged and bought one.

With some advice from a bystander, I was soon in control. I used to have a 14' Sunfish-class sailboat in RL years ago, and though my experience wasn't all that vast, it helped understand how the boat was reacting. The Flying Tako really does sail much like a small RL sailboat about the same size. And if you go into Mouselook, you get the sounds of the water lapping against the hull. It comes with two HUD attachments that simplify control of the boat and picturing the direction of the wind and the set of the sail, although you can use Chat commands for control as well.

You can set the color of the hull by command as well. I decided to go one better and add a wood-plank texture on the deck and a design on the sail.

Since I'm a part-time mermaid, I decided to name the boat Mermaid's Dream. A bit of searching in Google Images found me a perfect picture -- named, appropriately, "Mermaid's Dream". Some searching found me a template for the sail, which I imported into Photoshop and used as a base onto which I overlaid a half-transparent version of the image picture. You need one image for the left side, and the reverse of the image for the right side.

All this was after quite a bit of fiddling around to get everything to work right, but the result was well worth it: a distinctive and fine-looking boat (if I do say so myself).


There are several yacht clubs in SL and some good waters to sail in. The Hollywood area recently combined with Nantucket to give a total of 24 connected sailing and island sims. Mowry and Caddo have a couple of other yachting clubs and shops.

I don't feel ready to enter any of the races yet, but it may only be a matter of time and practice. Now if I can just find my hull wax...

Does a mermaid really need a sailboat?