Tall ships are the future for Windleport - both for the sailors and the richer ship owners/officers seeking fortunes in far countries. This fall, two prominent ships left Windleport to sail to far shores: The Mirage, owned by Jacques Villiers, and The Belladonna, owned by Benjamin Hood. The Mirage is sailing to the southern hemisphere, where Jacques Villiers has big financial interests since his earlier travels, and The Belladonna to the Far East, where Benjamin Hood is planning to start a venture to import luxury goods.

The ships sail for 2-3 sim days to reach Egg Island, in the middle of the Wide Ocean, where they stop to get supplies. Then they continue another 2-3 days to their goals, either in the Southern Hemisphere or in the Far East. Life on board is someowhat tedious, the sailors fish to get fresh food, and has plenty of time also to study various aspects of sim life - to go on such a journey gives experience and knowledge in many ways similar to a university - university of sim life.

 

Building notes: after trying out several downloaded ships I decided to build my own. The ship is built using the levels of third, fourth and fifth floors. I placed the original lot on one of the islands, then moved the lot out in the ocean using the Lot Adjuster. Then I changed the lot height, using this technique: by changing the Z-value with Simpe, making the sea level same as the bottom of the boat (or just under, cant have the sailors feet get wet :P)

To get the wave-effect I used Inge Jones' buyable portal available here. It must be placed 1 floor under the sea level to get the right effect, i used columns to put a floor square on the right place, removing the columns afterwards.

The ship is connected to the "bottom of the sea" with a long modular stair, to a platform and a door. In my imagination this is the boat they row to get to and from the ship.. sims then can go down to the sea bottom and get for example the shuttle taxi to reach the vacation hood.

I place the post box and buyable pedestrian portals on the upper deck. With the help of 2jeffs Visitor Controller I ban all visitors, because they have no business to come to a ship in the middle of the ocean!

I also place a couple of the Invisible Pond object, to make fishing from deck possible. Make a "pond" on the bottom of the sea and the sims will have wants to fish, which then easily can be fulfilled.

 

Oh - and the sails you get here. And I also experimented with placing a wind mill "inside" the sails with move objects on, to make the ship earn something from the brisk sea winds :D