Why Shouldn't a Mermaid Have a Sailboat?

I own a Flying Tako, which as most people who sail in SL know, is an amazing little craft that sails fairly realistically. But I'd been having to change to human when sailing because of the pose.

With the Blake Sea and the sailing sims to open east of Nautilus, a short swim/sail from Mermaid's Dream, I decided to do something about that. It didn't take long to fire up Poser and make a mer equivalent of the Tako pose, which I then replaced the original pose with in the boat.

Always looking for more things to put up for sail sale in the store, I made up a vendor sign and slapped a L$50 price tag on it.

I'll probably be spending more time on the water now.

Protest Regatta Machinima

I found this Machinima of the Openspace Protest Sailing Regatta by MarkTwain White, courtesy of Vint Falken's blog.

Openspace Protest Fleet

To protest the insane price rise for Openspace sims, a multitude of ships representing Second Life sailors gathered at Hollywood to stage a mass fleet sail. As you can see from the map above, the turnout was immensely successful. It clearly demonstrated the level of concern that this controversy has raised in the SL population.






I joined the crew of the Mer Cruiser to represent the mer population of Beek Haven, as well as the other seas that we all like to swim in. Sea dwellers as well as sailors have much to lose if our open waters vanish.


Some comments from other SL bloggers on the Openspace pricing controversy:

Linden Labs' announcement - Openspace Pricing and Policy Changes

Hotspur O'Toole - On How The Price Hikes Endanger Themed Communities
Ordinal Malaprop - Shouting into the Void
Second Thoughts - Jack Bombs the Humper Bunkers
Vint Valken -Linden Lab has it’s business model ass backwards


Here is a picture taken at sunset in the Beek Haven sea, to symbolize what we all may lose if Open Sim owners are forced to abandon their lands. Let's hope that this will not be sunset on such marvelous areas such as Beek Haven, Antiquity, the Second Life Sailing Federation sims, and much of Caledon, as well as the other areas we have enjoyed so much.

Where No Av Has Gone Before

I was excited to discover that six new sims have been added adjacent to Arianti where Mermaid's Dream is located. These new water sims make a connection between the continents of Nautilus and Mãebaleia (and don't think it wasn't tricky to track down the continent names, since they don't seem to be listed together in one place, but are scattered throughout the Second Life Wiki*).


I had been hoping that something would eventually happen. These new sims now link together a sizable body of water -- perhaps more than 30 sims, depending on how obstructed some of the passages are -- that hopefully will remain clear for boating. So you may see Mermaid's Dream -- my Tako, that is, not the shop, or Blue Wizard, Minto's boat, moored at the dock from time to time.

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* So I'll list them here for posterity. The current Second Life continents are:

• Sansara - the original and largest of the mainland continents.
• Heterocera the "atoll continent" to the north of Sansara
• Jeogeot - the "Korean" continent south of Sansara
• Islandia - two "island continents" adjacent to Sansara on the east; developed by Anshe Chung.
  
• Mãebaleia - the southernmost of the three "eastern continents"
• Nautilus - the middle of the three "eastern continents"
• Corsica - the northernmost of the three "eastern continents"
  

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?

How to begin?

It's been over a month since I was "born" into Second Life, the offshot of an avatar who wanted to explore the wild and fantastic sides of Second Life, but who also wanted to keep a "clean" public image in the process. Rather silly, and a bit cowardly, if you ask me. Still, I owe my existence to that hypocracy, so I won't complain. If my Primary wants to blow US$9.95 to bring me to life, I'm all for it.

I was given the name "Mare" because of my fascination with becoming a mermaid: Mare being Latin for "sea". By the way, the correct pronouncation is "MAH-ray", like "Mary" with a softer "a" sound. Not "Mair", please. Any resemblence to a female horse is purely coincidental, and a bit resented by yours truely.

Besides being a merperson, I also have outfits as an angel (both light and dark). I recently bought a set of scripted wings at Material Squirrel Wings. They flap, droop and stiffen, and have Excite compatabilidy (although I wouldn't know what to do with that, of course...). I'm a little disappointed that they don't extend fully, but I imagine there are technical limitations preventing that. I also have a lot of freebie fairy butterfly wings for when the fae mood takes me.

Besides enjoying assuming the aspects of the finned and winged creatures of fantasy, I have to confess that I also am drawn to the Darker Side at times. I'm talking about ropes, chains, cages, and frightening spiky devices. This isn't something that my Primary here or in RL wants to admit publicly. So you may find me occasionally hanging around, as it were, in places like Heaven & Hell (the biggest dungeon complex I know of in SL). I'll be in cuffs, maybe a bit of letther, and not much else (that narrows it down LOL).

So on with the blog. I have a month's worth of things to talk about, so the forcast is for a flurry of posts over the next few days, followed by scattered rantings and periods of quiet neglect. Stay tuned for the fun.