Maritime Estates

I had a thought about what it means to be a maritime estate and deciding factors, other than price, for whether or not I would want to live there, based on what happened yesterday with Costa Rica.

I took a look at the map on slurl.com and noted the pervasiveness of shallow water around the entire estate.


There are some deep channels that have been cut, but I have a distinct sense that I would have a difficult time getting around many parts of the estate with a boat bigger than a Leetle Cat with her centerboard up. I also get the feeling that there is too much land, not enough water - but then, as a financial matter, an estate owner has to balance that out so that it's livable at ground level and people don't have to escape to skyboxes.

For comparison's sake, I also looked at the Fruit Islands, as well as Sailor's Cove and the other USS sims.

Fruit Islands:


USS:


And my eyes were opened. I like the layout of the Fruit Islands, indeed. I like the wider expanse of water rather than the narrow layout of sims. However, the shallowness of water is even more apparent to me with the Fruit Islands, making me question the ability to sail any of my big boats.

And then look at the USS estates - lots of deep blue! That's what I'm talking about! A sailing estate (several, in their case) that has a lot of deep water so that I can comfortably sail my big boats.

What I cannot really tell from the picture is, how light of a blue is too light - how shallow is too shallow sail big boats. I'll just say this - I have definitely narrowed down my choices, should I ever decide to own land again. I would hope that the estate managers take a look and think about dredging their estate waters a little deeper.

Costa Rica, Once More With Feeling

I got stuck. Hud says it's a depth of .8 meters.

Really? I mean, really??!!

That makes me really unhappy. You know what they say about first impressions...

Costa Rica, Again

I don't know what is going on, it's not the sims... but it seems that when I'm doing too much camera work, I crash.... try to save a snapshot, crash. I managed to pull off a couple of pics and then crashed. The last crash, I don't know... I was stuck in shallow water. I think I need to switch boats.


This is where the trip ended, around 3 sims north of Guanacaste. I was stuck. I dusted off Renaissance, my Ketch, for use and got stuck in shallow water! Whoever cut this (somewhat narrow) channel didn't cut it very deeply and my keel got caught.

That shouldn't be a dealbreaker for me in considering this estate for buying land, but I'm feeling that it is. My Ketch isn't a particularly large boat, but I've got three big boats - the Larinda, the J-Class, and Columbia. How the hell could I use any of them to get around these parts of the estate? I haven't tested my One, but it could suffer just as well. I can't see myself buying land in this estate if I'm going to be too restricted in getting around it. There are lots of open water sections that seem pretty deep but there are some very narrow pathways too, as I can see from the world map.

*Pause* Maybe I'm just frustrated because of the lag and crashing. I will try again with the Twenty and if the same thing happens, that will seal the deal for me.

As a side note, I switched viewers in between crashing. The first picture was taken with the Dolphin Viewer 2 and the second with Boy Lane's Rainbow Viewer, a 1.22 viewer. You can't really see from these photos at this size, but the rendering between viewer 2.x and viewer 1.x is different - it's smoother with viewer 2. Antialiasing is on 8x in both and 1.x has more jagged lines in rendering. While I prefer the UI (the olllld pre-voice UI from 1.17), I am not enjoying the view as much now that I can see the difference with Viewer 2.

Costa Rica

I tried it, but it's too crashy today. Probably this crappy DSL, really, and not the sims. It's a lovely estate. I couldn't even get my first shot here done. Maybe later.