The Mystical Runa

We at Trudeau Yachts are always looking for the next inspiration. This one came from within Second Life itself. It turns out a close SL friend of Jacqueline Trudeau works in the fashion industry. Within that industry he is a designer of women’s handbags and other leather goods. Within that job description he reports to those at the top of the fashion houses where he works.  For a time the very top of this particular fashion house was Yves Carcelle, a well respected executive and by all accounts well loved within the organization he headed.  But business and fashion was not the only thing Monsieur Carcelle lived for.  His passion was sailing, and in particular the sailboats of Danish designer Gerhard Rønne (1879-1955).  Rønne was a building architect, but also a passionate yachtsman who designed and oversaw the building of 10 yachts (6 for himself) beginning in 1910, all christened Runa (from I to X).

“It’s a name I found within myself. It indicates ‘rune’ – a little mystical. I am also aware that it has a nice sound to it”. — Gerhard Rønne ¹

Over the decades the Runa yachts were well tended to, sailed by humble everyday sailors to those of more noble standing, including an ex-commodore of the Royal Yacht Squadron, the son of a prestigious French pastry chef, a top Portuguese financier. ²

Fast forward a century later to 2009.  Carcelle, with his keen eye for classic beauty, acquired two of the five extant Runa yachts, the yawl Runa IV (1918) and cutter Runa VI (1927).  He commissioned beautiful stem to stern restorations of both and were relaunched in 2011 and 2013 respectively.

Monsieur Carcelle actively participated both restored Runas in classic yachting regattas, but sadly about this time he was diagnosed with a particularly aggressive form of cancer which took his life in 2014.  One of his last acts was the commissioning of the book La Saga des Runa,  a history of the Runas and an ode to all things Gerhard Rønne.

Yves Carcelle at the helm of Runa VI

This brings us back to Jacqueline’s SL friend.  As mentioned, he was one of Carcelle’s lieutenants, a sailing enthusiast himself and a personal eyewitness to Carcelle’s fleet of Runa yachts. “Jacqueline, il faut construire Runa!”  One quick google of the boats and it was absolutely agreed. But which one? Since we hadn’t done a multi-masted mesh yacht yet, it had to be the topsail yawl Runa IV.

Runa IV

The Trudeau Runa IV

Working from the Runa plans, it didn’t take long to get the basics in place.

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But that’s when the fun began. In keeping with the authenticity of the Runa, not only the sailplan but things like the rope lashings that make fast sails to spars, multi-part sheets for all sails, blocks and tackles for the gaff halyards, etc. would have to be modeled, and scripted to move in concert with every angle of sail trim. (if some of you are wondering why this boat has been under construction for longer than it would take to build the RL version, that is a good part of the reason why!)

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(and a big thanks to our beta-testers who revealed that what we originally thought was scripted to move in concert with every angle of sail trim wasn’t quite so!)

We added a Danish-finish inspired cabin interior, also based on the RL Runa:

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One slight change, in addition to the aft quarter single berths we added a forward double vee-berth in place of the head in the RL Runa. Because everyone in SL knows, avatars need sleep more than those other bodily functions :-) There are a total of 34  53 (v1.1) sit, sleep, above deck lounging and cuddle animations in the cabin. Headroom is at a premium, so you may have to belay that beehive hair-do before going belowdecks ;-) (Seeing water in the cabin? This is the explanation)

Underway, there are seating positions for skipper and 2 crewpersons  – 1 heel-offsetting hike position per side for the skipper, 3 per side for each crewperson.

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Other features of the Trudeau Runa IV include

• Our should-have-been patented in-world luffing Tru-Sails.
• 1 reefing setting (douses the jib and main topsail).
• Wing and wing foresails for additional oomph when running before the wind.
• Half a dozen built-in traditional color schemes.
• Auto-rezzing boatyard jack stands (28LI).

Customization!

As with all Trudeau yachts, Runa IV 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  – including the transom and boat name face, rudder and tiller 5.1MB)

Sails (all  – including jib, staysail, mainsail, topsail, mizzen, main/mizzen furl 20.4MB *Please read how to apply in the “Sailing the Trudeau Runa IV” card that comes with the boat*)

Bowsprit (including boomkin, hardware, stays, chainlinks, etc 17.1MB)

Decks (including gunwales 13.1MB)

Deck furniture (including cabin, cockpit, coamings, hatches, skylight, etc 26.2MB)

Spars (including mast, booms, gaffs, halyards, stays, turnbuckle, etc 29MB)

(additional templates for other boat parts will be coming soon)

Dimensions:

Trudeau Runa IV – 85 prim equivalent , 51.66 ft (15.75m) length on deck, 75.85 ft (23.12M) length overall, 12.13ft (3.7m) beam, 7.5ft (2.3m) draft.  85 land impact moored, max 95 land impact when sailing.

Come view her at Trudeau Classic Sailing Yachts and see if you are ready for a sail into the mystic.

Runa Ghosting

¹ ² The Runa Saga

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

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)

For Francois

Francois Jacques in Second Life

Event time/date changed! Please note:

Earlier versions of this page had the release event scheduled for Sunday Nov 11, 1PM SLT.  That is now incorrect.  Hurricane Sandy knocked out the power at Trudeau Classic Sailing Yachts for a week, so we’ve rescheduled the event for Saturday, Nov 17, 1PM SLT at the Nantucket Yacht Club clubhouse.  Sorry for any inconvenience caused – please do plan on attending!

We’ve also changed the charity for the event to Hurricane Sandy relief oriented, the American Red Cross.

This last summer, sailors across the Second Life seas were both shocked and saddened upon learning of the passing of the beloved member of the SL Sailing community, Francois Jacques. Co-founder and Commodore of the Nantucket Yacht Club, United Sailing Sims principal, regatta organizer, advocate of sailing for the entire SL community in the Come Sail With Us centers, it’s no exaggeration in saying that sailing would not be the popular SL recreation it has become without Francois’ passion and dedication.

Speaking personally, I was both lucky and blessed to have known Francois since 2005.  She was an enthusiastic supporter of the Trudeau Classic Sailing Yachts before there was a Trudeau Classic Sailing Yachts.  She happened to spy me test sailing the clump of prims that became our first boat, the Trudeau 32, and wanted to know if she could buy it.  When it was available, she was Trudeau’s first customer and always among the very first to snap up each subsequent release, eponymously naming each boat “Francois Jacques” (I know because I made the name textures for her! :)  Later, Francois was a beta tester for Trudeau Classic Sailing Yachts, providing valuable feedback based on her vast experience in sailing the SL seas in all kinds and makes of boats. She was the one who suggested to us the boat that became the Trudeau One. I tried to explain to her that we didn’t take requests. She was persistent, and boy I am glad she was!

In the same spirit of Francois’ named Trudeaus, we are christening this latest boat Francois Jacques in her memory. I showed her a very early (static, non-sailing) build of it and she liked it a lot. Francois, I hope the final version meets your approval as well.

Come Contribute!

In addition to Francois’ work with the nuts and bolts of SL sailing, she was a tireless organizer of the Sail For Life/Relay For Life fundraising events. Not only did she arrange donations for many of the SFL silent auctions, as often as not she was high bidder herself!

In that spirit, Trudeau Classic Sailing Yachts, in conjunction with Nantucket Yacht Club, will release the Francois Jacques in a special fundraising event, Saturday, Nov 17, 1PM SLT at the Nantucket Yacht Club clubhouse. A portion of the proceeds from every Francois Jacques purchased at the event will benefit the American Red Cross in their Hurricane Sandy relief effort.. There will also be a silent auction for a one-of-a-kind personalized custom build, Francois Jacques hull #1, 100% of that proceed to benefit the American Red Cross. Plan now to attend and buy for yourself, buy for your friends at this worthwhile event.

The Trudeau Francois Jacques

The Francois Jacques under full sail

The Francois Jacques under full sail

Now a little about the boat. The Trudeau Francois Jacques lines and sailplan (5 sails – main, jib, staysail, gaff and jib topsails) are based on the NG Herreshoff revolutionary design from 1891, “Gloriana”. Gloriana is really the boat that got captain Nat on the map, her design with the long overhangs and cutaway forefoot took such advantage of the waterline length and sail area rating rules of the day, it allowed her to destroy every other boat in her class in the only season she raced. Her owner retired her after 8 races (all 8 wins) in a show of good sportsmanship. Needless to say, she was hugely influential in subsequent racing designs of the era, including the Herreshoff America’s Cup Champions Vigilant (1893), Defender (1895), Columbia (1899 & 1901), Reliance (1903) and Resolute (1920).

Francois Jacques Nameplate

Our version of Gloriana, the Francois Jacques, is scaled down from that 70ft LOA Herreshoff racer. Francois Jacques has a spacious cockpit outfitted in comfortable Victorian era tufted cushions. She also has a cozy cuddy cabin that sleeps two, making her ideal for cruising as well as racing. She carries a skipper and up to 2 additional crew/passengers. The crew sits (coaming, aft cabin wall) have a menu (similar to our NY30) for crew / cabin locations, with 3 crew heel offsets and animations per side.

Skipper and crew sits

Francois Jacques Crew

Francois Jacques Cabin

Wing and wing

Touch the sat-upon prim to redisplay the animation menu.  Selecting the “crew” option choice gives the crewperson the opportunity to help trim the boat for maximum performance in the usual Trudeau fashion, shifting their location from port to starboard (3 increments per side) using the keyboard L-R arrows.

All 5 sails, fantastically sculpted by the talented Bunnie Mills,  feature the Trudeau “tru-sail” luffing animations. You can deploy and stow the topsails as reefing measures and wing out the headsails for extra downwind running oomph.

Customization and Template Links

There are several built-in color combinations, all actual traditional color schemes found in the RL Herreshoff fleet of yachts. But as always, Trudeau provides you with texture templates for those who wish to make their own:

Hull and Rudder (2.7MB)

Deck and Parts (10MB)

Mast and Parts (9.3MB)

Name (307KB)

Sails (17.7MB)

(please look in your “Sailing the Trudeau Francois Jacques” notecard for example script and notecard for overriding FJ’s built-in sail textures)

Extra Goodies

The Trudeau Francois Jacques has the built-in mooring buoy, cradle when autorezzed over the hard, half-hull display model for your SL home. A box of international yachting flags to update your ensign is also included.

The Francois Jacques is available for your inspection at the Trudeau boatyard and initial availability at the Nantucket Yacht Club on Saturday, Nov 17. Come! (SURLs below)

Trudeau Classic Yachts

Nantucket Yacht Club

Dimensions

While constructed of sculpted and regular prims (not mesh), she uses the new SL object weighting model.

Land impact – 53 prims.
65.25ft (19.9m) LOA, 34.75ft (10.6m) LWL, 10.9ft (3.34m) beam, 8.73ft (2.66m) draft.
Cradle – 11 prims

The Trudeau Catboat Epicurus

The latest Trudeau is tribute named after the beloved and esteemed figure in the community and Commodore of the Fishers Island Yacht Club, Epicurus Emmons, who very sadly passed away earlier this year. Epi was a fixture on the SL sailing scene organizing regattas, cruises, events and a tireless help to all he came in contact with. He had a huge, brave heart and we were honored to have known him and call him friend.

Though not European in origin like Epi’s cherished skûtsje, a tribute from a boat like this is not as odd as it might seem. Epi was a instrumental in bringing out an earlier Trudeau catboat – the Leetle Cat – giving us much needed advice on performance and handling. Both boats, the Cape Cod Catboat and the Frisian Skûtsje (originally common workboats now live on fitted out as traditionally-themed yachts and yes, racers) sport gaff rigs and strong, distinctive sheers.

The Cape Cod Catboat is another favorite design of ours that has gone through several iterations, getting closer to the ideal in our mind’s eye as SL prim molding technology has advanced. So, a Catboat? What is it? I’ll steal from an earlier posting on the Epi’s high-prim predecessor, Jacqcat

The catboat is a native American art form – plumb stem, wide beam, mast in the eyes, gaff rig, big barn-door rudder, single head-stay. The catboat – a little boat, a useful boat, a handy boat, simply rigged and simple to operate; a mast and a sail, a tiller and a cabin for two — there was a time when most small boats were rigged as cats.

As with all the “new” Trudeaus, the Epi has the inworld “TruSail” luffing sails, moveable skipper and crew positions to counteract the heeling forces (Epi carries skipper and crew/passenger complement of 3) and the first that offers a snug cabin with sleeping berth for a couple.

The Epicurus is the perfect boat for you and your partner to set sail in for those overnight and weekend SL cruises. Swap your bathers for sweaters and set your windlight to foggy – just the right romantic touch for a boat like this.

Find that no-return parcel (hopefully in a picturesque cove), switch on the cabin lights, snuggle in for the evening and continue your cruise the next morning. ;) If you do get caught in a tight spot, there is a motor under the cockpit sole (including the requested reverse gear).

While the Epi has 5 built-in traditional color schemes (no extra charge for “fat packs” ever), here are all (and we mean all!) of the PSD templates for making her your own:

Hull and rudder (1.86MB)
Sail and furl (4.1MB)
Name (460KB)
Spars (4.78MB)
Other exterior parts (6.62MB)
Interior (1.5MB)
Hatches and trim (3.17MB)

Trudeau Catboat Epicurus

32 prims. LOA 27.5 ft, beam 12 ft, draft 1.75 ft

Fair winds, EE.

The Tres-fashionable Sailor

We all know sailing is in fashion. But what’s in fashion while sailing?

Harper Beresford’s SL fashion blog tells all.

You must check out her blog beyond the linked posting, she has a fantastic way with the looks!

One, Uno, Une, Eins, Een, Ett, Satu, 日本語, 简体中文版, 한국어 …

Are there any more translations from Babelfish we’ve left out? :)

The One is the newest classic boat from the Trudeau Classic Sailing Yachts. It takes it’s inspiration from a well-known Scandinavian one-design keelboat of the 1930s that has developed, through the years, into actively raced fleets in locations across the globe. From Norway to Long Island Sound, from San Francisco to Bermuda, you could say it has truly international appeal. (though RL intellectual property considerations prevent us from singling out that boat, we’ve dropped broad enough hints that any sailor worth his/her/it’s salt should have no trouble identifying it ;)

With a 7/8 Bermudian rig, it is the first Trudeau boat with fully sculpted sails and, sculpted by Bunnie Mills, what beauties they are – perfectly billowed, perfectly curved throughout the leech with wrinkles like real sailcloth, and actually texture-able.  But that’s not all. Wait until you see…

…Realistic Luffing!

On top of that, these sails are scripted to really luff!  No need to keep your eye fixed on that sail angle figure – One will let you know inworld, visually and aurally, about your sail trim. Actually, you won’t be able to keep you eye fixed on that sail angle figure as it is not to be found anywhere (but don’t worry – wind and speed numbers are still in the sail control and info-HUDs). One is the first Trudeau boat that is truly sailed by your senses.

Specifically designed with racing in mind, One has features such as the chute, ballast shifting positions for skipper and up to 2 crewmembers and naturally, sail handling duties shared by all aboard. That spinnaker bag looks like a comfy spot to relax between heats… and it is!

Customization

There are 6 built-in color combinations, all actual schemes found in the RL fleet of the boat not mentioned above (including a folkboat-y like bright hull) that we are quite proud of. But naturally serious customizers will want to make their own, and we have you covered in texture templates for covering your One:

Hull and Rudder (2.55MB)
Sails (5.45MB)
Name (208KB)
Nearly every texture found in the boat (excluding sails – 11.42MB –  for serious modders!)

(please look in your “Sailing One” card for example script and notecard for over-riding One’s built-in sails)

Extra Goodies

One has built-in mooring field and dockside details – buoy, fenders (yes, those are half-hitch knots making fast the lines ;),  cradle autorezzed over the hard, half-hull display model for your SL home.

One and her revolutionary sails have to be seen to be appreciated and you can at Trudeau Classic Sailing Yachts. Sit in the One on display for a short demo of them and you’ll see why we are so excited by them!

Dimensions

32 prims (sit locations for skipper and a crew of two)
39ft (12m) LOA, 8.3ft (2.53m) beam, 6.1ft (1.86m) draft.
Cradle – 20 prims

A special thanks to the SL sailors who have requested this design – Francois Jacques, Naeve Rossini, Jane  Fossett – for me,  it was the right boat at the right time.  And an extra-special thanks to Bunnie Mills whose SL sail lofting skills made it all possible. Now I can get back to my catboats!

The Romance of the Sea

Discontinued

Rozinante was the name of Don Quixote’s steed. She was a long, thin animal but every time the Don mounted her he had remarkable adventures. Perhaps seven-eights of the romance of these adventures took place in Quixote’s mind, for he was a great reader of romance who rather looked down on the times in which he lived. Like Don Quixote, every time I venture out in this Rozinante I meet with great adventure and romance. Perhaps, also, seven-eighths of it takes place in my mind but each point that I round opens up new vistas with all sorts of possibilities.

L. Francis Herreshoff
The Compleat Cruiser: The Art, Practice and Enjoyment of Boating

L. Francis, son of famed American yacht designer Nathanael “Captain Nat” Herreshoff was famed and accomplished in his own right. Probably his most admired and beloved design was that of Rozinante, a 28 ft canoe yawl, introduced in a chatty “how-to-build” series of articles in the late sailing magazine, The Rudder.   Rozinante was the epitome of LFH’s philosophy of simplicity, elegance and romance (and if you thought you’d seen the last Herreshoff designed boat from Trudeau, think again!).

When a thing is out of the usual and pleasing to contemplate it is romantic. When an object is nicely proportioned and has retained some well-proven ancient quality, it is romantic looking. To a sailor a romantic vessel is one that looks like a good sea boat, one which has a good sheer and nicely proportioned ends: in short, a vessel he falls in love with at first sight, as we all did when we saw Rozinante.

Ibid

LFH was fierce advocate of boats that looked the way boats should, goddammit! Boats that weren’t designed to “meet some ridiculous ratings rule” that “penalize the speed-giving qualities of a sailboat”. Rozinante’s style would be in fashion “long after the abortions of the present are forgotten, dangerous and expensive rule-cheating wind-bags.” He dismissed the thought of spoiling Rozinante’s profile by adding a headroom gaining doghouse as “most of the sailormen I have known sat down when they ate and preferred to lie down when they slept”. His advice? “If you want to make changes, then by all means get a modern boat for your changes cannot make her any worse!”

Quite a character! A throwback in an ever-changing world, it’s no wonder he identified with Don Quixote. But with the passion his 60 year old design arouses in many in comparison to say, your average fiberglass (“frozen-snot” in LFH-speak) McBoat, he was definitely on to something.

When is a Yawl not a Yawl?

Though termed a canoe yawl, sharped eyed viewers will note Rozinante is in fact ketch rigged (the mizzen mast forward of the tillerpost). LFH explains:

In the 1890’s was a very popular type in England for cruising in some of their delightful waters… The name “canoe-yawl” simply means a boat with a sharp stern that is larger than the usual sailing canoe… The term, in it’s day, had nothing to do with the rigs these pretty vessels used, for among them were sloops, ketches, yawls, luggers, and cat yawls…. Of course, many yawl boats had no rig at all.

L. Francis Herreshoff
Sensible Cruising Designs

Okay, so that clears things up, right? :)

The Trudeau Rozinante

We are taking the concept of romance in a slightly different direction from what LFH, lifelong bachelor that he was, probably had in mind. We’ve conceived the Trudeau Rozinante as a couple’s cruising boat. Leave casual friends and family ashore – Rozinante’s 30 prims limits those aboard to captain and his/her/it’s first mate.  You will find no less than 5 couples cuddle animation sets built-in (this graphic shows where to sit). Other single sit passenger locations are the berth and the mizzen mast.

If you and your mate want to take an extended cruise, say to seek out that mythical passage north of Nautilus, Rozinante will keep you snug once you find your overnight anchorage. Her simple yet spacious cabin – fully equipped with double berth, settee and galley – is unprecedented in a boat that doesn’t need to be worn.  Did you say galley??? True – avatars don’t need to eat, but is not SL the perfect setting for all kinds of LFH-style adventures, seven-eights of which take place in the mind?

And for the times when you want to feel juices of a more competitive nature flowing, have your partner “sit” on the floorboards (trust us, this is for competition!). That’s the position where the crewperson becomes “moveable ballast”, shifting their weight from side to side (using the L-R arrow keys), keeping Rozinante as upright as possible, coaxing out the last bit of performance from her.

The Stuff

We won’t list all the features. If you are reading this, you likely know and love (or hate) them well by now. We will say Rozinante follows our Columbia concept of riding on the complete boat (30 prims) and then optionally filling in the rest of the details by wearing the rigging attachment  (42 prims).

Customization? Yes! the hull (1.9MB), name (277KB) and sail (386KB) templates are all here (the name template is little tricky as the portside text has to be flipped and reversed, but you’ll figure it out!).

Rez Rozinante over the hard and she comes down on her boatyard cradle. And just because this is SL don’t think you are off the hook. After all, Rozinante is a wooden boat. So “sit” on the cradle, wear the offered paintbrush and that can of Interlux and get to work!

Dimensions  – a little bigger (but then isn’t everything in SL?) than the RL Rozinante:

30 prims (carries skipper and first mate), 49ft LOA, 9.8ft beam, 6ft draft
details – 42 prims
cradle – 44 prims

Come take a look at her at Trudeau Classic Sailing Yachts and kindle a new romance of your own and, in LFH words, “remember that a thing of beauty is a joy forever.”

Trudeau Twenty Writeup

For seasoned and beginning SL sailors alike – Jane Fossett as an article on SLSailing.com with everything you wanted to know about the Trudeau Twenty. Handling tips, tactics for gaining maximum performance on various points of sail (with charts and graphs, no less!), and much, much more  – wow, theres a lot there that even I didn’t know! Thanks for the terrific writeup, Jane :)

The Leetle Cat!

Discontinued

Our latest Trudeau Classic Yacht was inspired by the Beetle Cat, a wooden one-design centerboarder catboat well-known up and down the northeastern US coast. The Original Beetle Cat Boat, named after the family who designed and originally constructed it, was introduced in 1920 and over 4,000 have been built to date. The Beetle Cat class has a long and varied history – it is one of the oldest classes raced actively and probably the only one still made of wood.

The design was taken from the catboats that were used for fishing in shallow waters along Cape Cod. The wide beam, with the rudder not extending below the bottom of the keel, and centerboard that lifts up are features that make this boat ideal for shallow waters. She is a boat that can be beached. The generous beam makes her unusually stable. Made entirely of wood, (oak frames with cedar planking) with no ballast, she is non-sinkable and the large decked area forward on the boat means spray falls on the deck rather than inside the boat. The rig is similar to that used on the old, large-size Cape Cod catboat, with the mast well forward, using a single sail.

The Trudeau Leetle Cat, with it’s single sail, is also easy to sail and ideal for novice SL sailors. While she is the leetle-est and lowest cost boat in the Trudeau line, she is not lacking in features including windshadowing, functional centerboard and sail reefing.

Customization

To keep the cost down, the Leetle Cat comes in one finish from the Trudeau boatyard. But we are publishing Photoshop PSD templates for infinite customization. Follow the links for Hull (1.07MB), transom naming (117KB) and sail (5.55MB) graphics. (see this page for step-by-step naming instructions – Leetle Cat follows the Sea Sharp procedure).

Other Features of the Trudeau Leetle Cat include:

• Can be sailed either solo or in collaboration with a crewmate. You can assign skipper permissions to others as well.
• Realistic sailing including functional reefing for overpowering winds, centerboard and the latest sailing feature for the Trudeau fleet – boat to boat windshadowing.
• Moving tiller, rudder and helmsperson animations. Hard a-lee is *really* hard a-lee on the Leetle Cat :)
• Onscreen HUD provides button control for the common boat handling commands and display of environmental conditions. An included 2nd info-display only HUD is geared towards regatta racers.
• For overriding the fluky SL winds, artificial wind strength and direction commands which are translated into apparent wind. SLSF windsetter compatibility prompts you for acceptance of racewind.
• Masthead pennant functions as apparent wind taletell.
• Since sim crossings can be unpredictable, copy and modify permissions.
• Extra goodies such as autorezzing drydock cradle when rezzed inworld over land.

Dimensions:
Trudeau Leetle Cat – 29 prims,  17.7 ft (5.34m) LWL, 21.6 ft (6.6m) LOA, 8.9 ft (2.7m) beam, 1.4ft (.42m) draft board up, 3.45ft (1.05m) draft board down.

“Beetle Cat” is a registered trademark of Beetle, Inc.