The Snipe 2.10

I was supposed to be helping to test the updated Snipe 2.0, as Giulia, Bianca and I had been racing Snipe for a while on Giulia’s dedicated sailing estate. Giulia was hospitalised again and I basically didn’t sail much at all since.

So, I had the 2.0 version, had it painted and that was about it. Today though I decided to take it out and try the updates on it. I received a 2.10 version upon rezzing, painted it with the ‘I am a Sniper’-paintjob that Bianca gave me and took it to the waves in TYC’s old and trusted Siracusa bay. Got to love sailing in The Channel.

Compared to the Snipe 1, the 2.10 version has a daggerboard, that can be raised at 110 degrees TWA or more (Well, you can do so upwind as well, but you won’t be getting any far that way…) and the sails can be winged, which will give you a speed boost above 150 TWA. It also turns much more snappy, which solves an issue with the 1.0. Dinghies and light sailboats should not turn like oil tankers.

Someone tell that TMS too..

If Lalia resists the pressure to make the thing too fast, the Snipe may prove to be an interesting tactical racer. With it’s ability to use Lalia’s great new Global Wind system and it’s sailing characteristics, maybe we finally got a boat again that makes for interesting sailing on windshifts and position, rather than run from buoy to buoy at 40 knots and trying not to crash into stuff, while crunching numbers on the hud to the last digit.

And it is certainly a change from the 80m tall monsters that you see moored at almost every marina right now.

I mean: why don’t they just buy a car if they like that?

Or a skyscraper…

In case you don’t want a car or skyscraper, you can get a Snipe here: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Anse%20Boileau%20Isle/56/101/21. I haven’t seen it on Marketplace yet, but Bianca and a couple others have made paints available for it.

A prim race we must win

Bianca shared this photo on her Flickr and I just thought:

“Yes, this is why I got tired of sailing in Second Life over a decade ago.”

And again.

Photo by Bianca

As it is, the number of boats I am interested to sail with is very limited now. The number of events even smaller.

I am giving lessons in the Flying Fizz now.

Less prim, more boat.

Flying Fifteen at Noon, thursday 5 August

At Chaos Sailing Club, tomorrow at noon SL Time (Pacific Daylight Time) there will be races in the brand new Flying Fifteen keelboat, made by Jero Ramo. The boat is Fizz-based and well… being a keelboat… won’t capsize as easily as the Fizz.

The boat will be available at the startline*, but can also be obtained at Tradewinds Yacht Club, Chaos Sailing Club in Foresta and at Marketplace. The boat is free, so anyone who wishes to race can get one easily.

The race is Sponsored by Dutch, of The Mesh Shop, who will provide the regatta winner with a boat, free of choice, from his shop.

*The notecard supplied to me didn’t provide me with a SLURL to the startline…

This is me sailing the Flying Fifteen

The end of the Finn class at the Olympics

Most people will know I like sailing dinghies most of all. The reasons are simple: I like to do stuff on my own, at least for a part of the time. And I don’t think racing some big multi-person ship on my own in Second Life makes any sense. (Nor does racing anything else than the Flying Fizz, but that’s another story.)

I just saw the last medal race ever in the Finn class at the Olympics. After Tokyo 2020 this classic dinghy is done for: it’s deemed only suited for men, as, especially due to it’s larger sail area, it is a boat for the heavy and muscular. What boat is left for the heavy sailors is not a question that was asked.

The Finn has become a classic at the Olympics. Sailed by great athletes like Paul Elvstrøm and Ben Ainslie, it has meant a great deal for sailing as a modern sport. For Danish sailing legend Elvstrøm it became a vehicle to develop new tools, new sails, but also new sailing tactics in. Ben Ainslie and many others used it as a step up to ocean racing or the America’s Cup.

So, now it’s byebye for this classic dinghy at the Olympics

Flying Fizz at the 2021 Summer Sailstice

At the 2021 Summer Sailstice exposition in Second Life with the Flying Fizz 6M

The previous Summer Sailstice I had a small booth with the Flying Fizz 3.0 8 and a series of scripts and tools, for 2021 I had a larger spot reserved. Since Giulia is away to real life for the summer (yes, that exists still after over a year of COVID-19…) there is no Fizz 6M for sale yet, but the prototype looks great with Bianca’s paintjob on it.

Besides the Fizz 6M prototype, there is still the current boat here and information on racing it and some Fizz Cup history

I also included a corner with a small part on the Flying Fizz World Cup history. It features both sailors who won the cup twice and MarkTwain White’s video’s of the 2009 and 2010 Fizz Cups.

And of course, you can find info on where to get a Flying Fizz and where to race it.

An old friend returned

The other day I logged in and I saw an instant message from an old friend. I didn’t actually expect her to be online, but I replied and she turned out to be in-world. So, well, what do old friends do? We met up at the docks, at Tradewinds, where this week we still have HotLaps going on.

On the docks with Silber

Silber Sands is kind of the person to envy for me, as she did twice what I never succeeded in: winning the Flying Fizz World Cup. Next to organising the 2013 cup, she won the 2012 and 2014 editions herself. And yes, Silber was also elected SLSA Sailor of the Year before. it’s obvious why: she had done a lot for the community.

She told me she had been away too long. I agreed. I hope we will soon be sailing together, either in the same boat or as competitors in a race…

The Sjogin

I knew Lalia, who is also helping Giulia with the new Flying Fizz project, had been working on a boat of her own for a while. She had asked me for some reference before, open sourced scripts from various makers, and sometimes I heard something about the sailboat project from others.

Two weeks ago she IM’ed me and I heard that she had it on Marketplace. I suggested that we should have a formal launch of it at Tradewinds: sailors like that sort of thing. Lalia decided to present her new boat, the ‘Sjogin’, last night, at the Friday 1PM Tradewinds Cruise. The 90 minutes demo would make it easy for anyone who wanted to join the cruise in her new sailboat.

Sailing down The Channel at the Tradewinds Cruise

The Sjogin is a lovely little cruiser, a wooden boat with a cosy cabin. It is inspired by a boat that exists in RL and was built in New Jersey in the USA. I must say I enjoyed the sounds as I sailed it last night. There is an extensive manual, in several languages and items like the tiller can be configured. It can be set to inverted or non-inverted mode. And amongst other things also the inertia of the boat when steering can be changed. The sailing engine is scripted by Lalia herself. She mentions having studied the codes for Bwind, the Fizz and Dora Gustafson’s sailing engine amongst others.

I haven’t tried most of the functions yet, as I quickly figured out she will listen to the main commands that are also used in bwind boats if you want to start her quickly and get going. I am not sure yet if anyone is planning to race the Sjogin. My impression is that it is primarily meant as a nice cruiser. But you never know, once someone likes it enough, those crazy sailors in SL may suddenly start race it.

Sjogins coming in at the Tradewinds Cruise afterparty

If you want to buy or try the Sjogin, you can find a vendor and a demo at Tradewinds Yacht Club, or you can buy it from Marketplace. There is a demo on Marketplace too.

Sailing legends: Tracy Edwards

A couple of months ago already I saw the documentary ‘Maiden’, about the eponymous boat that finished the 1989-90 Whitbread Around The World Race, with an all-female crew. The boat was skippered by Tracy Edwards, former school dropout turned navigator. Maiden actually had quite the bunch of high-level female sailors aboard. Yet no one expected them to finish the race.
Maiden finished the Whitbread second in her class, winning 2 stages in the race, including an epic Punta de Este to Fremantle run through the Southern Ocean.

In this interview Tracy reflects back on the race, 30 years later.

Two pink sharks at the docks

I did some painting with the Fizz 6M prototype and now there are 2 pink sharks docked at Tradewinds Yacht Club. I still need to redo the texture I think and make it work better. It took me too much adjusting now. But hey, it’s there, now I can do some testing on the boat…

My old Fizz 3.0 8 is now accompanied by the Fizz 6M prototype at the TYC docks

An interview with Giulia

Out in the first Fizz 6M prototype yesterday at the TYC cruise

While half of SL is raving about ocean racers and other stuff that won’t fit on the grid or can’t be raced there realistically but is just big and fast (preferably both), Giulia and Lalia are scripting the prototype of the Fying Fizz 6M, the successor to the Fizz 3.0. I hope it wil attract some more people to actual tactical sailing in our virtual world.

But meanwhile, we are stil having fun. I post regatta results now on the slsailing.app forum, as does Giulia, who setup the site. And oh yes, as that was the title of this blogpost: Giulia was interviewed by Stex Auer. Do read it! You can find the interview here: https://stexauer.medium.com/i-was-born-a-sailor-f4365cfb9b65