Someone teach me to do machinima! This was taken at my kitchen counter with my Flip camera! It looked so much more impressive on my computer screen. You just have to be there October 26th at 12 noon SLT to see it "in person!" (in avatar?)
Ahoy, Mates! She's seaworthy!
Here we are taking the Susan Constant on her maiden voyage with Bigreal. It was fantastic! I had to wear a third of her. Big wore a third. the rest was few enough prims for the sails to pull. What an experience! I kept pulling friends into it to join us. Louise, Amethyst, Anibal, and I were all on deck. Big was below steering. I think all he had was a rudder. We went through a small squall and hit a few objects. Once the ship keeled over quite a bit. I didn't know that was possible! I don't know how Big linked and packed some of the prims for himself and me to wear them, but that's why he's a builder and I'm not!
Added 10-27-08 - photo of me "wearing" 1/3 of the ship. Awesome! It was necessary for the sails to be able to pull the ship. We had to lighten her up quite a bit. The physics in SL are genius!
This weekend I went on a tour to this build, by Zotarah Shepherd, which is probably the first such place that I found any real personal connection with. It's about Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligences theory. Basically he defines many areas of human understanding. The linguistic, mathematical logical, intrapersonal, interpersonal, spacial, naturalist, musical, and kinesthetic are the eight represented in this interactive site. I have heard of these for years and found it interesting to try to figure out which my children and I had to greater and lesser degrees. It's a fun place to play as well.
I have spent a lot of my freetime in SL this week watching Bigreal build. Saturday he took a break and gave me a ride on a couple of his personal ships. He rezzed this ship, unfurled the sails, I hopped onto the bow and we were off! He sailed around several sims in his area and ran aground briefly once. The sails actually propel the ship and the wind direction matters. It's amazing to me that the creators of this virtual world have actually included the physics of the natrual world. 
Along with sailing there are mermen and mermaids living in this water as are sea creatures of many kinds. There are often battles between ships and Bigreal tells me the damage is actual. Perhaps the captains can simply rez a new copy of the ships they lose, I don't know. You can see in the distance on this shot a partially sunked ship.
