Corsica Rising, part 1

This post details my first attempt at a peripheral exploration of Corsica by boat. I actually made this trip a couple of days ago, but the postcard feature wasn't working and as a result, it took about half a day before they showed up in Snapzilla and Flickr. I was afraid that they might be lost, but had a feeling that the queue was just gummed up by yet another brilliant move by Linden Lab.

I chose the Larinda, for its speed - it was faster than all of the boats in my little fleet, except maybe the new WildWind DG-470. I don't know about the new J-Class, though... I suspect that the J-Class is potentially much faster. I haven't taken the time to learn the WildWind just yet, and I was anxious to take a look at Corsica, so here I am.



I started out at Watchman, where I stopped last time from my trip to Corsica from Nautilus. Gabriele Graves is a fellow sailing aficionado and has a friendly port there in Watchman, so I figured it was an ideal place to start. That's Gabriele's Tradewind and another tall ship in the background of the above picture.

I sailed east, picking up from where I left off last time. I didn't get quite as far as I'd like to, because I didn't have the time and the ugly crash that ended my trip came at an opportune moment. Basically, I made it from Watchman to Majistral, but it's a decent trip... there is still much to see in this short trip and I'm happy I made it.



I love seeing mainland shoreline, because it reaffirms the diversity of Second Life sailing. It's all over the place. Water is such a valuable property, and access to large bodies of unobstructed open water is a monumental boon to any property.



I think that some people think of the SL sailing community as that relatively small group that is often the somewhat insular and yet vocal folks that populate the USS regattas and associated yacht clubs. In truth, it's much bigger than that, as evidenced by all of the countless heretofore nameless harbors, marinas, yacht clubs and general sailing geeks that dot the shores of the mainland continents. And let's not forget the other private sims that boast open waters for sailing.

But I digress.



I found a Linden infohub, Degrand Infohub. I found it highly ironic that the parcel in the sim was called "Water Activities" and yet there was no place to actually rez a boat or jetski, or whatever. I mean, duh, Lindens, come on. I need to remind myself to put in a LDPW ticket to address that situation.

At first I didn't know what Degrand was, so I circled the island a bit to see who was on it. A few people were there, although I couldn't really see them as they were clouds to me. I hope that they found the place enjoyable. I wonder what they thought of me circling and hanging out nearby in my schooner?



I took a photo of Degrand from an aerial viewpoint. It's a very small island, complete with a nigh-ubiquitous shipwreck. Think of it as Half-Hitch's Mini-Me.

I opened up the map and saw that I would be passing the sim called Oryx. I had to stop, because my friend Oryx Tempel shares the sim's name and I wondered if it would in any way happen to reflect her personality. Ehh, not really. It was rather bland in general.



I was grateful for the little harbor that someone set up at Oryx, though. I couldn't help but feel contempt for the idiots two doors down who were super-aggressive about access and security in the description of their property, and the dreamer selling his 1024 for 90k. As for the aggressive couple... I sincerely hope your neighbors banned the crud out of you.



The only thing of note is a friendly little sail-up bar on the edge of Oryx, some place called Scoundrels. They over-used these prims for a mountain backdrop, though. It hides the water slide they've got from certain angles.

I think just a scultpy or two would suffice...



But what was really interesting was not Oryx but what was next to it, a sunken city with "lost treasures" - I have GOT to go back with scuba gear. I just need to avoid the shark. ;)

I had almost passed it by without looking under the water, but I circled back to find it. At first it wasn't terribly interesting, as I was on the edge, but I'm glad I did, as the view got a lot better.



I thought that was pretty neat. While sailing over the city, I saw some things glowing that appeared to be possible treasure. Must, must get there and scuba... but I don't know if I will be able to moor my boat for too long, need to check autoreturn time.



One cool thing I did see while circling around was this whirlpool. My first thought? Charybdis!! lol.



One disappointing thing about cruising mainland is seeing the repetitive nature of the housing. I am pretty sure this is a rental community, because of the ever so familiar housing by Ace's Spaces/Park Life.

Yes, their work is beautiful - this is by no means criticism of them. But it's getting to the point where it's not distinctive. I see the houses and I'm like, ho hum. Big deal... their houses are everywhere. I'm not saying it because I would like more people to buy my houses, but because it really does get boring after a while. I would love to see more property developers exercise independent thought and do something different.

Unfortunately, it wouldn't take too much longer before I crashed and crashed hard. I made the mistake of trying to traverse a plot off the protected path, and *whack* I hit a parcel that was full, and it returned Majestad to me and sent me off into the deep blue negative numbers of the sim. I teleported home and I still kept going into negative numbers.

Le sigh, Linden Lab.

PostScript: here is the map of the crazy trip.