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

New York, New York … A Helluva Boat!

If there’s anything predictable about Second Life, it’s inventory loss, sim crossing horrors, lifetime commitments lasting all of a week… and another Herreshoff-designed yacht from the Trudeau Classic Sailing Yachts boatyards.

Legendary yacht designer N. G. Herreshoff (Captain Nat), when he wasn’t building America’s Cup winners, designed several club boats over the years for the well-heeled members of the New York Yacht Club – models 30, 40, 55 and 70 feet on the waterline. This time we’ve set our sights back to 1905 and the New York 30, definitely the most beloved and well-preserved of these one design-classes.  For the sum of $4,000 (close to $100,000 today), the NYYC member who bought the boat received a vessel that was ready to race and cruise, delivered complete – from sails to awnings to a sounding lead, two anchors, and full set of china for the cupboards.

Though many of the NY30s were used for cruising, with their speed, weatherliness, and ability to carry sail, the NY 30s had the sleek lines and overhangs of a racing yacht whose purpose is to go fast–and fast they did go. They were usually raced with a paid crew, two of a five man complement. In addition to the their paid salary, the paid crew shared in the prize money – one dollar for a start, four dollars for a first place finish, three for second and two dollars for a third. Those gilded age tycoons – a generous lot, no?!? ;) OK, that four dollars is about a hundred bucks today (and no income tax), but still – we are talking the JP Morgans of the world, the original .01 per-centers.

The Herreshoff NY 30 was one of the most cherished designs of the Golden Era of Yachting. Today the 30s still exist as a one-design racing class .Of the original 18, 11 are either still being sailed today or awaiting restoration. Amazing for a wooden boat over 100 years old.  And please check out the class site at www.ny30.org for more info and history.

Our New York 30

The Trudeau interpretation is, like everything in SL, somewhat scaled up – our 30 is actually closer to a 50. Like the real life original, she’s sloop rigged with a loose club on the jib. Naturally, her sails feature the Trudeau Tru-Sail luffing animations. For extra oomph, wing the jib out on runs (NY30 is command compatible with our other gaff sloop, the Trudeau 12).   You might notice the lack of reeflines on our model and in the historical photo at the top of this article. As Herreshoff historian Maynard Bray tells it, “…for more than a century now New York 30s have been raced and sailed in all kinds of weather, and, with their original gaff-sloop rigs, enjoyed a reputation for never having to the reefed, no matter how hard it blew.”

Customers have asked for a version of our popular Knockabout gaffer sloop (with a cabin and vee-berth that sleeps two), but somewhat larger. Well, here she is!  The NY30 is the largest Trudeau non-attachable with a full cabin (she sleeps 4!) and we’ve emphasized that feature with easy access to a plethora of animation selections. In addition to the skipper (sit location, the usual – tiller. Or anywhere on the deck or hull), there are 4 crew/passenger locations – the cockpit coamings, the cockpit tub edge, the cabin house top, the forward deck hatch. The sitter is presented a menu of redirected sit locations/animations.

Touch the sat-upon prim to redisplay the animation menu. Try them out! (you’ll find some may overlap). 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. As also in the real life original, The Trudeau NY30 can carry a complement of 5 – skipper plus 4 crewpersons (you decide how much to pay your paid hands!)  There are other animations to help those paid hands earn their pay (mop and bucket included)

The cabin, outfitted in Edwardian period-correct raised panel joinery and tufted upholstery, is the place for relaxing after a day of sailing or upkeep for owner and crew alike (just remember, two is company, three is… well, there’s room for three… and four, too!). The cabin windows are scripted to alternate between glass and curtains for “privacy”.

Customization and Template Links

There are 7 built-in color combinations, all actual traditional color schemes found in the RL Herreshoff fleet of yachts (yes, even that green2!). But as always, Trudeau provides you with texture templates for those who wish to make their own:

Hull and Rudder (2.4MB)
Sails (including furled main) (15.8MB)
Name (205KB)
Deck (14.8MB)
Parts a bunch of other textures including interior (43MB)

(please look in your “Sailing the Trudeau New York 30” notecard for example script and notecard for overriding NY30’s built-in sail textures)

Extra Goodies

The Trudeau New York 30 has built-in mooring buoy (yes, those are half-hitch knots making fast the lines ;),  cradle autorezzed over the hard, half-hull display model for your SL home.

The New York 30 is available for your inspection at all-new Trudeau boatyard (use the SURL below). New York Yacht Club membership not included – who needs it!

Trudeau Classic Yachts

Dimensions

Land impact – 32 prims (sit locations for skipper and a crew of four)
70ft (21.4m) LOA, 47ft (14.3m) LWL, 12.5ft (3.8m) beam, 10.1ft (3.1m) draft. (yeah, she’s big)
Cradle – 22 prims

Special thanks, as always, to Bunnie Mills for her exquisite modeling work and help in making this boat a virtual reality!

The Third Time. A Charm?

We at Trudeau are huge fans of the boats of the Herreshoff family. If it seems like every other boat that comes from our yard is in some way a tribute to either Captain Nat or his son L. Francis’ work, it’s probably because it is. Of course, the one design that is most approachable, perhaps the most endearing and enduring is Nathanael’s 12 1/2 daysailer. We are in love with that boat and have tried to model it from the earliest days of TCSY (read our rhapsodic praise and historical tidbits about the real life H12 here). The Trudeau Sea Sharp (circa 2007, shown below) was our first attempt at building a 12 1/2 – like boat.

Of course, working with the SL sphere and cylinder primitives at our disposal didn’t quite lend themselves to the compound curved beauty of the 12 1/2’s lines.

It’s no surprise (to us, at least) that as soon as we had mastered a sculpty form beyond that of a hollowed out log, we would take another stab at the H12. That was the Trudeau Twenty (below left), our first sculpty boat.

Closer perhaps, but still no cigar. There are RL H12 owners in Second Life who directed comments our way on Twenty’s shortcomings as a Herreshoff H12 tribute. The masthead all wrong… the coamings are supposed to sweep all the way to the transom… the jib is supposed to self-tend on a club… and take those battens out of the main! Hey, when you are the owner of an important piece of yachting history and a bona-fide masterpiece, that entitles you to be picky!

So now, over 4 years after Sea Sharp hit the seas, nearly 2 1/2 years after Twenty’s launch – those comments taken to heart, other lessons learned, new building skills acquired, additional Linden scripting functions to abuse, led us to take 3 of our infatuation with the H12. Since it is more or less 12 feet on the SL waterline, we decided to call this one a twelve as well.

Presenting our T12

We think we nailed it this time! Though that makes it somewhat smaller than Twenty, the T12 can still haul you and 3 of your friends on sailing excursions throughout SL’s waterways. All four of those seated positions help counteract Twelve’s heeling – by shifting from side to side. There are tons – tons – of other new features.

• Redesigned hull and other new parts – coamings, rigging, rudder, cockpit benches, tiller, mast, mast hoops, boom, jib club…
• Beautiful sculpted gaff mainsail and jib with just the right billow and twist to bring a tear to an old salt’s eye (thanks to the very talented Bunnie Mills – give it up for her… again!).
• Our exclusive Tru-Sail feature as first introduced on the Trudeau One. The sails flap, luff and fill to give inworld visual indication of correct sail set. No HUD angle sail by numbers… no color codes… no big inworld dials… just realistic true to life sail behavior.

Alright already … this is getting to sound a lot like our write up for the Leetle Cat II. We suggest you read about the features of the “new” Trudeau boats, including T12, there. As you might have noticed about Trudeau boats, some boats have some features, other boats have other features. We try to give each of our boats a flavor of the RL ones they are modeled on.

Here are some features unique to the T12. While she doesn’t have the spinnaker (not exactly standard equipment on the H12 when first introduced in 1914), she has a very effective wing and wing setting for running downwind.

T12 is the replacement for the Twenty in our lineup, as such we have kept and updated popular features from that boat. For the cruising set is the motor and the boom tent and sleeping accommodations.

Customization templates? For you hot modders and rockers, follow these links for .PSD graphics:

Hull (2.33MB) including rudder templates

Transom naming (388KB)

Sails (9.44MB) – main, jib, furled sail and boom/reefed sail templates

(see this page for step-by-step naming instructions – T12 follows the Sea Sharp procedure – Sea Sharp lives on in T12 after all!)

Dimensions

32 prims (sit locations for skipper and a crew of three)
18ft (5.5m) LOA, 6.5ft (2m) beam, 2.6ft (.79m) draft.
Cradle – 21 prims
Tent/Lantern/Mattress – 28 prims
Mooring buoy and line – 11 prims

Come see the new Trudeau 12 at Trudeau Classic Sailing Yachts.

Charmed? We’re sure!

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.”

The Gem Of The Ocean

Discontinued

Defender, our boat inspired by the 1895 America’s Cup racer, has been a Trudeau staple since our earliest days. Our original Defender was voted “Best Overall” at the 2006 SLSA Boat Show. “Defender Liveaboard” was our first boat with a (somewhat) usable cabin, Defender II our first high-prim high-detail two piece vehicle/attachment boat. Historically, Defender is our all-time most popular boat.

Long live Defender!

That’s why we are killing her off ;) The first life Defender, with her bronze plating below the waterline and weight-saving aluminum above, lasted scarcely longer than the Trudeau version before galvanic corrosion sent her to the scrapheap. Designer NG Herreshoff was unfazed, remarking that she was a success in the task she was built for. And she was – the America’s Cup winner in 1895 and trial horse for the contender 4 years later.

The Defender After “Defender”

We shift our attention that contender, the successor to Defender – the yacht Columbia. Commissioned by a syndicate of Gilded Age moneybags from the New York Yacht Club and launched in 1899, Columbia, also from the Herreshoff board and yard (he would design and build an unprecedented 6 consecutive America’s Cup champions), was considered an evolutionary improvement to Defender – built to the same design rules but with deeper keel, more ballast, more sail area. Not to mention more electrolytically compatible structural materials. Columbia beat the British challenger, Shamrock, in all three America’s Cup races in 1899 and and again against Shamrock II in 1901, making her the first two time cup defender. And a 6-0 undefeated one at that.

If you think the first life 1930s J-Class was a big boat, it wouldn’t hold a candle to the earlier generation “90 footers” – Defender, Columbia, and Columbia’s succesor Reliance. Built to the waterline length and sail area rules of the day, these boats were enormous! 90ft LWL, 135ft LOA, 20ft draft, 12-16,000 sq ft sail area. Imagine gybing a mainsail on a 115ft boom. This is the inspiration for our latest.

The Trudeau Columbia

Our Columbia, our biggest boat yet – twice as big as our Defender, even bigger than J-Class – let’s face it, you can’t model a 135ft first life boat to the size of racing dinghy. Her base component, weighing in at a lightweight 28 prims, is a complete sailer for skipper and 3 ballast shifting crewmembers. Her sculpty hull has that distinctive Herreshoff outline with fin keel, cutaway forefoot and long overhangs, a shape that could only be approximated in our earlier Defender models. Mainsail with 2 reef settings (the first reef douses the topsail), jib, staysail, jib topsail and spinnaker/drifter – all from the fantastic Bunnie Mills’ sail loft – replicate the sail suite of the first life Columbia. All the usual Trudeau sailing features are there – well… you know them by now ;)

Actually… there is a new feature worth a mention. On all known previous Trudeau boats, sail changes, reefing, spinnaker hoisting and dousing all happen – Bang! – instantaneously. Not so with Columbia, you will find there is a period of driving power reduction during your reefing and spinnaker changes. How long a period? It can be anywhere from 5 to more than 20 seconds. It’s based on several factors – boat speed, wind speed, number of crewmembers aboard (the more the merrier), the number of times you’ve already done a sail change operation during your sailing session (practice makes almost perfect!). Oh, and once you think you’ve solved the riddle in getting your time down, there may, just may, be a random event that will prolong your next change. The idea is to give the skipper another thing to think about. In a close battle, will that topsail or mainsail reef give you the edge? Or will you lose out during the time it takes to set it? Shouldn’t you really carry a crew to help out with spinnaker operations?

The Trudeau Defender was a high detail boat with a cabin, you say. And so is our new Columbia! If you want to fill out the details there is an attachment with standing rigging, bobstays, spreaders, etc you can wear while sailing (or rezzed while moored).

The Cabin?

Yes! The fully outfitted cabin primset, with period appropriate detailing, can be rezzed while moored. Included are 8 animations for your belowdecks activities, from determining your location by studying the charts to reading a Herman Melville classic to snuggling with your honey.

*A bit of disclaimer about the cabin. Even in first life sailboat cabins involve compromises, and our Columbia is no different. Columbia is a more accurate model of the first life racer than Defender was, so there is no deckhouse. It is sitting, not standing, headroom below. Plus, to keep the primcount down on the base sailer, there is no real opening in the deck – the “hatch” area is actually a transparency in the decking texture. Therefore you don’t enter the cabin by walking down the companionway, but rather by sitting on the hideable poseballs located abovedeck. It takes some bit of SL(tm) skill in maneuvering the camera down in the tight quarters between decking and sole but believe us, it can be done! Standing up might find you trapped between prims (though you might just fit under the skylight) so it is best to exit by sitting on an abovedeck prim.

Love My Tender

The tender NG Herreshoff designed for Columbia was a classic in her own right, still revered and built today.

Our Columbia carries her tender on deck, just as the original did. Plus, touch it and the dinghy is rezzed in the water – a fully functioning rowing and sailing boat in it’s own right! Columbia’s HUD works with her tender’s sailing and rowing operations.

Customization

Get ready for a whole slew of customization templates for Columbia. These are the links to the Photoshop PSD templates for the hull (950K), naming (3.5MB) and graphics for the 6 sails and variations (2.25MB). The tender has it’s own templates for hull (2.8MB), sail (284KB) and name (290KB).

Dimensions:

Trudeau Columbia

28 prims (carries skipper and up to three additional passengers/crew), 117ft LOA, 13ft beam, 13.2ft draft
details – 59 prims
cabin – 36 prims
cradle – 35 prims

Come take a look at her at Trudeau Classic Sailing Yachts and see if you don’t agree that the spirit of Nathanael Herreshoff lives in Second Life!

Trudeau Twenty Launched!

Discontinued

Renowned American naval architect Nathaniel Green Herreshoff designed and built the world’s finest yachts, including 6 consecutive America’s Cup champions, from the mid 19th to the early 20th centuries. Despite the attention those magnificent boats have received and rightly so, probably his most beloved, popular and enduring design is his 12 1/2.

Known variously as Bull’s Eye, Buzzard’s Bay 12 1/2 Footer, Buzzards Bay Boy Boat, Doughdish, H 12 – the daysailer drawn up nearly 100 years ago is still built today. Despite her compact size (the name comes from her waterline length) and origins (as a training boat for the children of yachtsmen!), the 12 1/2 can carry 4-6 adults. The little yacht feel has helped ensure her popularity to this day.

This is the boat that inspired the latest from Trudeau – we’ve taken Cap’n Nat’s design, upscaled her to 20 ft LWL to carry 4 avatars and christened her the Trudeau Twenty.

We’ve also gone back to our roots as this is our first “rideable” (non-attaching) model in a while – but one with a sculptie twist. The graceful full-keeled hull and sweeping coamings as well as the cockpit and decks are constructed from a single sculptie prim. That leaves plenty of room for the nautical detailing we like to put into the Trudeau boats – without having to use a high primcount attachment. Come see her at Trudeau Classic Sailing Yachts and see if you don’t agree!

Philosophy

There are plenty of wonderful sailboats to choose from in SL, but one thing to realize is that they are nearly all modeled on high performance sailing dinghies. They sail fast, they plane, they point high, throwing more wind at them makes them zip along even faster while heeling at 45 degrees or more. A boat like the Herreshoff 12 1/2 – with her full deep keel and gaff rig – just doesn’t behave like that. However she’s a lively sailer and we’ve attempted to make the Twenty’s SL sailing characteristics in line with her RL inspiration. You may find her overall speed potential, her capability on various points of sail, her behavior when facing higher winds somewhat different than what you are used to with other SL sailing boats. However we think they perfectly match her looks and pedigree as a “classic” full keeled sailing yacht.

Customization

“There are only two colors to paint a boat, black and white, and only a damn fool would paint it black.”

-NG Herreshoff

OK, so the great designer was a little strong of opinion. ;) That doesn’t mean we have to follow his every commandment. As with all Trudeau boats, there is a built-in selection of traditional nautical color schemes, including Cap’n Nat’s favorite. But we are also publishing Photoshop PSD templates for the hull and rudder (3.0MB),  transom naming (443KB)  and sail (9.41MB) graphics. Download them, customize them, apply them to your Twenty and make her truly your own! (see this page for step-by-step naming instructions – Twenty follows the Sea Sharp procedure).

Other Features of the Trudeau Twenty include:

• Can be sailed either solo or in collaboration with a crew (up to 4 total riders including skipper). You can assign skipper permissions to others as well.
• Realistic sailing including functional reefing when encountering overpowering winds and – introduced for the first time in the Trudeau fleet – boat to boat windshadowing.
• Moving tiller, rudder and helmsperson animations. Hard a-lee is really hard a-lee on the Twenty :)
• 2 HUDs provide button control for the common boat handling commands and display of environmental conditions. The full featured HUD allows individual control over each sail, allowing the seasoned skipper access to such sailing concepts as wing and wing, jib backfill, etc. For the novice or lazy (horrors!) skipper, the EZ-Sail HUD controls all sails with a single click!
• 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.
• Auxiliary motor to power you through those rare occasions when the wind dies down.
• Accomodations for your crew in sit animations positioned about the cockpit.
• Since sim crossings can be unpredictable, copy and modify permissions.
• Extra goodies – autorezzing drydock cradle when rezzed inworld over land. Mooring buoy and line rezzes on forward deck cleat touch.  Rezzing boom tent, lantern and sleeping poses. Half-hull model for display in your SL home.

Dimensions:
Trudeau Twenty – 27 prims, 20 ft (6.1m) LWL, 26.6ft (6.9m) LOA, 8.7ft (2.65m) beam, 3.7ft (1.15m) draft