Patch Patched

 

(Newest Note: Patchogue II release will be Sunday July 7, 7AM SLT)

New Note: the Second SOL Regatta has been extended past June 23, so the Patchogue II release date has been pushed back as well. Please check back here for the updated release date.  Very soon now…..

Note: The Trudeau Patchogue II was chosen as the class boat for the 2013 Second Sol Regatta (A Sail4Life Fundraising Race Event).  The Patchogue II will available to the general public at the conclusion of the regatta, June 23)

Trudeau Classic Sailing Yachts is transitioning to new building materials.  Don’t worry traditionalists, it’s not and never will be fiberglass, carbon fiber, molded polystyrene, polyethylene or any other yucky petroleum based product.  Mesh has taken over the SL grid and we have succumbed as well (yeah about time, Trudeau!).

But boy are we glad we did in our all new Patchogue II, our “mostly mesh” rework of our popular original Patchogue catboat from 2009.  Everything we said about the origins of that boat applies here, and doubly so.  We took the body plan from Gil Smith’s masterpiece Lucille and molded our mesh hull to it’s stations and profile.

The result was a RL lines-accurate SL boat hull, something not possible in prims or sculpts. Yay for mesh!

Bail!

Now Patch II, this lines-accurate model of the iconic Gilbert Smith design (and much more accurate than our previous Patchogue), has a very low profile. In fact, much of her cockpit is below the waterline.  Since SL prims don’t (and likely never will) have water displacing properties, we used the old “masking” texture to keep most of the water from the cockpit when sailing relatively level. It works fairly well, but there are two drawbacks with this method.

First, the masking texture also masks avatar parts (remember the invisiprims that came with your old prim shoes?)  So any part of your AV, such as your legs, that dangle below the cockpit water mask will be cut off (yo ho, me hearties, get your peglegs!).  We took this into account when developing all of the boat’s animations.

Second, setting your viewer’s “Advanced Lighting Model” option for enabling shadows negates the effect of the masking texture.  So if you have shadows on, your Patch II will look like this:

Sigh. One step forwards (mesh), one step backwards (shadows). Why can’t we have it all?

Meshed Up!

There are a bunch of features we’d found neither possible or practical on previous non-mesh boats such as the highly detailed rigging, sail furls on the boom when reefed and a working (woo-hoo!) mainsheet.  Not for nothing is she a 50-some prim equivalent.

All Aboard!

Patchogue II  can carry up to 4 people including her skipper.  The skipper position is “sitting” on the tiller prim (or either cockpit bench), the other crew/passenger sit locations are the top of the centerboard trunk and the fore and aft decks.  See the sit positions graphic:

Of course it wouldn’t be a Trudeau boat if all aboard didn’t help offset heeling by hiking out in several positions, so they do! Other now-standard Trudeau features include:

• Our should-have-been patented in-world luffing Tru-Sails
• Half a dozen built-in traditional color schemes.
• 2 sail reef points.
• Rezzing mooring buoy.
• Rezzing boatyard cradle.

Customization!

As with all Trudeau boats, Patch II is modify permission-ed allowing you to make her your own. These are the links to the Photoshop PSD templates for the:

Hull Parts (including backbone, decks, rudder/tiller, cockpit and boat name 13.1MB)

Bright (wood planking) Hull Parts (including backbone, decks, rudder/tiller, cockpit and boat name 16.6MB)

Spars (mast, boom, gaff and mast hoops 9.52MB)

Sail (including mainsail, reefed and moored furls 11.25MB)

Dimensions:

Trudeau Patchogue II – 55 prim equivalent , 26.5 ft (8.1m) LOD, 9.2ft (2.8m) beam, 3.9ft (1.2m) draft (board down)