Finalmente

 

Is that Jacqueline Trudeau and friends sailing off into the sunset?  It just seems that way. You don’t want to know when we first started this boat. Okay, Okay… it was June…. June of 2013. Yikes. Time flies (actually it crawls) when you are scripting main and jibsheet movement.

Finally

Introducing Trudeau’s return to the “big boats”, our 12 Metre racer/cruiser, our first new boat in nearly 2 years. Based on the real life 12 Metre class, the yachts that raced in the America’s Cup competition for nearly 30 years from the 1950s through the 1980s, the Trudeau 12 Metre is an accurate scale model of these celebrated boats.

Only 12 meters? I thought you said “Big Boats”

Yes! It’s more like 70-80 ft in length – “12 metres” doesn’t indicate the boat’s length, but rather the result of a complex formula whose variables include waterline length, sail area, beam, freeboard, “girth” (the measurement taken around the boat from one sideboard, under the keel, and then over the top on the opposite side back to the original side) – boats designed to this class were first built in 1907.

The America’s Cup competition, suspended during the second world war, when resumed more economical vessels were needed  to replace the huge and expensive J-class yachts that were raced in the 1930s; the 12 Metre class was selected.  We also selected the 12 Metre as a successor to our popular J-Class boat, they are similar in inworld size (the real world J Class boats were nearly twice the size of the 12 Metres).

Size is about the only quality in common between the Trudeau J-class and Trudeau 12 Metre.  Our 12 Metre is constructed of mesh, her lines and detailing are completely accurate and taken from the 1937 wooden 12 Metre “Trivia” (whose wonderful site can be found here), she has animated running rigging, full complement of sails – main, jib, genoa, spinnnaker – and many other details.

All Aboard!

The Trudeau 12M  can carry up to 5 people including her skipper.  The skipper position is “sitting” on the wheel prim (or anywhere on the hull), the other crew/passenger sit locations are the cockpit coamings, deck house, skylight and base of the mast.  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!

In addition to the working crew positions, there is a wide selection of sits and couples cuddles animations in the full cabin that do not effect the boat’s trim. These are accessed by sitting on the cabin’s port and starboard settees:

Other now-standard Trudeau features include:

• Our should-have-been patented in-world luffing Tru-Sails
• Half a dozen built-in traditional color schemes.
• Auto-rezzing boatyard jack stands (16LI)
• Half hull model

Flood Insurance!

You’ve probably noticed a lot of full cabin boats in Second Life have quite high freeboard (the distance between the boat’s waterline and sheer). SL boat designers face the same issue that RL boat designers do – attempt to get the maximum cabin headroom while still maintaining a pleasing and efficient profile. One technique used is lowering the cabin sole (the floor of the cabin).  SL boat designers face an issue that RL ones don’t have to – Second Life water is not displaced by Second Life prims.  We kept our 12M profile in proportions to that of RL 12 Metre yachts with their racer’s low freeboard and subsequently ended up with much of her cabin 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 cabin when moored. 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 cabin water mask will be cut off.  We took this into account when developing and selecting 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 on most viewers (the Dolphin Viewer does display masking textures with advanced lighting enabled).  So if you have ALM on and not running Dolphin, your 12M cabin will likely look like this:

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

Customization!

As with all Trudeau boats, 12M is modify permission-ed allowing you to make her your own. These are the links to the Photoshop PSD templates for the:

Hull Parts (hull – rudder uses hull texture – and transom and boat name 1.9MB)

Sails (all  – including mainsail, jib, genoa, spinnaker and main furl 21.2MB *Please read how to apply in the Sailing Guide*)

Spars (including mast, mast spreaders, boom and spinnaker pole, gooseneck hardware, boot 14.7MB)

Deck (fore and aft templates – also includes cockpit which has a portion of the deck 13.1MB)

Deck Parts (lots of goodies! – deck house, companionway, skylight, hatches, winches, boom crotch, etc, etc… let me know if you want anything that’s missing 45.8MB)

Cabin Interior (everything! 27.5MB)

Dimensions:

Trudeau 12 Metre – 92 prim equivalent , 82 ft (25m) length, 14.2ft (4.33m) beam, 11.5ft (3.5m) draft

See her inworld at Trudeau Classic Yachts

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